Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation

Sinner s on Tr i a l Sinner s on Tr i a l Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation Magda Teter h a rva r d uni v er...

Author: Magda Teter

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Sinner s on Tr i a l

Sinner s on Tr i a l Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation

Magda Teter

h a rva r d uni v er sit y pr ess Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2011

Copyright © 2011 by Magda Teter All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Teter, Magda. Sinners on trial : jews and sacrilege after the reformation / Magda Teter. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-05297-0 (alk. paper) 1. Jews—Legal status, laws, etc.—Poland—History. 2. Religious minorities— Legal status, laws, etc.—Poland—History. 3. Sacrilege—Poland—History. 4. Counter-Reformation—Poland. I. Title. KKP206.T48 2011 364.1'8809438—dc22 2010039226

For Shawn, with love— For all the years of reassuring presence, irreplaceable friendship, and love

Contents

Introduction: From Sin to Crime 1 The Meaning of the Sacred 2 Stealing Sacred Objects

1

9 40

3 Prosecuting Sins, Defending Faith

63

4 The Making of a Polish Jerusalem

89

5 Protestant Heresy and Charges against Jews 6 Christians on Trial, Jews Expelled

157

7 The Struggle for Power and Authority 8 Justice and the Politics of Crime Glossary

176

200

227

Abbreviations

229

Note on Names and Terminology

231

126

contents

viii

Notes

233

Select Bibliography

305

Acknowledgements

315

Index

319

Sinner s on Tr i a l

m a p 1 The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Mariah E. Reisner, Wesleyan University.

Introduction From Sin to Crime

In the summer of 2009, a scandal about the handling of a consecrated Communion wafer broke in Canada after the prime minister, Stephen Harper, accepted a wafer during a Catholic funeral Mass for the former governor-general, Roméo Leblanc. As a devout Protestant, Harper should not have received the Communion at a Catholic Mass, but that was not the scandal. Rather, it was the question: What happened to the sacramental Communion wafer? Video cameras showed the prime minister accept the host, as the consecrated wafer is known, but apparently not consume it. Some even said he had put it in his pocket. Monsignor Brian Henneberry, vicar general and chancellor in the Catholic Diocese of Saint John, told the press that a parishioner had approached him after the funeral and “expressed concern” that the prime minister had “slipped” the wafer into his pocket. The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement denying “the Prime Minister pocketed a communion wafer offered to him by a priest.” But Monsignor André Richard, the archbishop of the Canadian Diocese of Mocton, said “the church law is clear. . . . Only the Catholics can receive communion.”  Some Canadian Catholic bloggers expressed outrage that their prime minister “out of ignorance and ill preparation, disrespected the Body of Christ.”



sinner s on tr i a l

The 2009 incident highlighted the persistence of Catholic-Protestant tensions over the meaning of the Eucharist, a pivotal issue at the crux of the breakup of Western Christianity in the Reformation, when Catholics and Protestants were willing to die and to kill over the meaning of the Communion wafer. For Catholics, the wafer or “the host” was God; for Protestants, it was “bread,” representing various degrees of Christ, from a symbol to “cosubstantial presence.”  But the Eucharist had a political significance, as well. Protestant challenge to the Eucharist’s meaning and substance threatened the clergy’s authority and status. After the Reformation, the contest over the Eucharist came to the fore not only in theological debates among splintering Christian groups but also in the treatment of certain sins and crimes by lay courts, among them “sacrilege.” And, as the thirteenth-century Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas put it, sacrilege committed against the Eucharist was “the gravest of all.” Those accused of it were brought before criminal courts, tried as sacrilegos, and usually sent to their deaths at the stake. The charge of sacrilege against the Communion wafer or, as it would become known, of host desecration, emerged in the Middle Ages. Its most infamous version was an accusation against Jews for stealing and desecrating the host, sometimes used to justify the persecution of Jews. By the late sixteenth century, these anti-Jewish accusations apparently died down in Protestant parts of western Europe, but charges of host desecrations and sacrilege did not stop with the Reformation, or on the Oder River. In Poland, east of the Oder River— one of the largest states in early modern Europe and a home to the largest Jewish population in the world—libels against Jews belong squarely to the post-Reformation era. They reflect CatholicProtestant conflict, changing conditions of ecclesiastical authority and jurisdiction, and competition in the economic marketplace. In the law, sacrilege, or sacrilegium, went beyond anti-Jewish antipathy to include a variety of violations of the sacred. Both charges of sacrilege in general and of the desecration of the host in par ticu lar reflected the Catholic Church’s profound anxiety about its identity and power after the threat of the Protestant Reformation. During the Reformation, Poland was a site of complex power struggles between the Catholic Church and the state, between the nobles and the king. By that time, the power of the Polish king was considerably diminished, to the benefit of the nobles. This process of increasing weakening of the king had begun in the late fourteenth century, when the long-ruling dynasty died

i n t roduc t ion: f rom si n t o c r i m e



out and after Polish monarchs began to be elected. The electoral system weakened the monarch but increased the power of the electors—the powerful magnate and the gentry. Gradually, the nobles managed to get increasingly more concessions from the king; a pivotal one came in 1505, when the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish parliament composed of the nobility) passed a constitution known as Nihil novi (Nothing new), which barred the king from issuing new laws without the consent of the nobles. Further concessions came in the following decades, with the king’s need for nobles’ support of his expansionist policies and funding of wars, as well as for the dynastic aspirations of King Sigismund I, when he was seeking to guarantee that his son, Sigismund August, would become the next king of Poland. In 1529, when Sigismund I was still a ruling monarch, his then nine-year-old son was crowned king as well. The nobility’s assertiveness became most manifest during the so-called “movement for the execution of the law,” aimed to make the kingdom fiscally and legally more efficient. Some nobles strove for a codification of the law in Poland, but their efforts failed, leaving the Polish legal system fragmented, a reflection of the increasing political fragmentation of the country, with each estate subject to different courts and laws. Still, as a result of this process, the nobility succeeded in removing itself from any external jurisdiction— ecclesiastical, royal, or that of local magistrates. Significantly, in 1578, the nobles pushed for the creation of the Crown Tribunal, a noble-run court that effectively ended the king’s role as a supreme judge ( judex supremus). This political contest was not unrelated to the Reformation and had a tremendous impact on the role that secular courts began to play in delineating religious boundaries in the post-Reformation era, when secular courts began to adjudicate crimes not only against church property but also against church symbols, especially those linked to the eucharistic wafer. Theft or misuse of sacred symbols and objects transformed what had been a “sin” and could be absolved by the priests into “a crime” that led to harsh sentences of mutilation, hanging, decapitation, and, principally, burning at the stake. The courts’ treatment and categorization of “the crime of sacrilege” depended on the presence or absence of the Eucharist, which, according to the judges, made the space and the vessels sacred. This classification influenced and determined the punishment. Thefts from Catholic churches and improper touching of the consecrated wafer were classified as sacrilege. Those accused of “the crime of sacrilege” were subjected to the cruelty of early modern Polish courts, which routinely used torture to examine them and, sometimes, also




witnesses; if convicted, they usually were burned at the stake. By contrast, those who stole from synagogues or non-Catholic churches were considered common thieves and therefore punished less severely. This shift from handling “sins” against the Church in ecclesiastical courts to prosecuting them in secular courts was an outcome of the Protestant Reformation. In the mid-sixteenth century, to protect Protestants from persecution by the Church, the increasingly politically assertive Polish nobles sought to end the cooperation between the Catholic Church and secular courts. The first steps to achieve this were taken in the early years of the Reformation in Poland, when a statute passed at the Sejm in 1538 prohibited the clergy from joining secular courts (ne spirituales judiciis seacularibus se immisceant ), even as notaries or court clerks. The next step came in 1543, when the Sejm outlined competencies of secular and ecclesiastical courts, “lest incompetent law be evoked.” In the 1543 constitution, however, the ecclesiastical courts retained control over areas of belief and were responsible for “judging differences of the Holy Christian faith, heresies, schisms, blasphemies against God, and apostasies.” Other areas still under Church courts’ competencies were “tithes, seven Sacraments of the Church, benefits [beneficia], sacrilege, simony, capital interests [ foenoribus], murder of clergy,” and witchcraft (incantationes et magias ), among others. The 1543 constitution threatened to fine anyone who would take a layperson into ecclesiastical courts in cases other than those specifically outlined in law, and anyone who would summon a cleric into secular courts in cases not under the purview of the ecclesiastical courts. Still, as late as 1551, the king ordered secular authorities to implement the verdicts of ecclesiastical courts. Four years later, in 1555, the year the Diet of Augsburg made Lutheranism legal in the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish nobles gathered again at the Sejm in the city of Piotrków. Deputies to the Sejm passed no crucial legislation, but they proposed a law that would remove ecclesiastical jurisdiction from most cases concerning religion. They ruled that, at least until the provincial council would meet to discuss the religious fissures, there would be no prosecution for blasphemy against the Eucharist or the Trinity, both “matters that are now in dispute.” They proposed that, in case of a trial in a Church court, the verdicts could not be executed by the secular authorities. Catholic bishops regarded this step as an assault on “church laws and jurisdiction,” as in the “German lands.” In response, Pope Paul IV charged his nuncio, Luigi Lippomano, who was at the time in Augsburg trying to influence the




outcome of the pivotal Diet, to rush to Poland and intervene in Polish affairs. The Polish bishops, for their part, appealed to the king, Sigismund August. Even as the king suspended the jurisdiction of the clergy over cases pertaining to religion until the “national” general council, he warned that blasphemies, public or private, against the “noble sacrament” and “the holy Trinity” were not to be tolerated. The king instructed that for the time being these doctrines were to be followed “according to the order of the Roman Church.” Should anyone go against his decree, he warned, the Catholic clergy were “free to use their jurisdiction.” The king urged all who had religious disagreements to attend the general council, but, as he found out when Nuncio Lippomano arrived in Poland, the proposition of a national council was opposed both by the Catholic Church and the nobles, who feared that with “priests and judges” present at the council, a “definitive verdict” would be passed from which there would be no appeal. The Sejm in Piotrków was at an impasse. It was not until the constitutions of 1562–1563, 1565, and 1573 formally ended the use of secular courts and institutions as an executive branch of ecclesiastical courts, leaving ecclesiastical courts unable to enforce their verdicts. The 1562–1563 Sejm constitutions ensured access to secular courts for anyone excommunicated by the Catholic Church, a mea sure tantamount to a blatant refusal to enforce verdicts of ecclesiastical courts. This represented a repeal of the 230-year-old royal privilege that had given city captains the authority to confiscate property of an individual found guilty or excommunicated by a Church court. Two years later, the 1565 constitution explicitly confirmed the provisions; any summonses by clergy would be thrown out of court: “The Land Deputies complained that contrary to the Piotrków constitution of two years ago, some city captains [starostowie] are summoned by the clergy because they [the captains] do not want to execute [the verdicts of ecclesiastical courts]. . . . We, affirming and fulfilling the above mentioned constitution, nullify such summonses, whatever they might be.” These legal developments were again condemned by Catholic Church officials and prominent preachers, but to no avail. More than thirty years after the 1563 constitution had ended the execution of Church verdicts by secular authorities, an influential Jesuit preacher, Piotr Skarga, expressed exasperation over the situation in his seventh sermon before the Sejm: “When the Tribunal issues a verdict, it is executable; so, too, when a captain [issues a ruling]; when the mayor [burmistrz] and the chief magistrate [wójt] [issue a verdict], their decrees are also executed by the secular arm. But when a bishop, God’s




servant [sitting] on the highest divine throne [stolica] on earth, to whose authority even the King was once subject, . . . issues a judgment, there is no execution, no result, no respect. [Such judgment] is dismissed [wzgardę ma].” Skarga called the 1563 law “godless and cruel,” causing harm to “God’s glory,” and linked it directly to the Protestant Reformation: “After this statute, which was passed in the year of the Lord 1563, which ended the execution of the [verdicts from the] ecclesiastical courts that had been in place in this kingdom for six hundred years since the beginning of Christianity [here], soon heretics began to take control over churches, diminish Catholics’ honor [katolikom odejmować imię], fight tithes, raid church lands, establish heretical ministries, and persecute God’s Church.” The eradication of collaboration between ecclesiastical courts and secular authorities, and removal of the Church authority to judge cases involving religious matters, gradually led to the secular courts’ adjudication of cases that had previously been the purview of ecclesiastical courts; among these were heresy, apostasy, sacrilege, bigamy, adultery, and other marital cases, as well as conflicts over tithes. Thus, in an unexpected and ironic twist, the secular courts became enforcers of religious— and, eventually, particularly Catholic—values. This inversion helped accomplish what religious polemic and education had failed to achieve—reinforcing the Catholic religion as the only true religion, the only one considered sacred. The shift of competencies over religious matters from ecclesiastical to secular courts that resulted from the Sejm constitutions applied predominantly to the nobles’ courts. This was because the reasoning behind passing the laws was to protect the nobility from external jurisdiction. Other estates—including the townspeople, the Jews, peasants, the Catholic clergy, and others—were subject to separate courts and jurisdictions. Still, the nobility’s efforts to limit the power of ecclesiastical courts had a broader impact, as it dovetailed other legal developments. In the city, such conflation of competencies had begun to appear somewhat earlier; in 1511, the first witchcraft case in Poland was tried and executed by a magistrate in the region of Wielkopolska. But with popularization through print of German codes of Sachsenspiegel, the Saxon Mirror, and the acceptance of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (known as the Carolina), cases concerning religion began to find their way more systematically before the secular magistrates. The popularization of the German Sachsenspiegel and the Carolina across Poland coincided with the nobles’ efforts to remove laity from the Church juris-




diction, resulting in dovetailing of the magistrate’s newly affirmed role in religious cases with the nobles’ secularizing efforts. The authority over religious cases accorded to the magistrates was broader than that granted to secular courts in the 1543 constitution. Many offenses, some of which might have been regarded by the Catholic Church as sins requiring only penance with a symbolic punishment— such as contributing wax or money to a church—in secular courts became serious criminal offenses that threatened social order. Crimes against religion, including apostasy, blasphemy, and sacrilege, almost surely sent the convicts quickly to the stake, while social and sexual crimes, such as adultery, bigamy, abortion, and infanticide, became punishable by diverse forms of death, as prescribed by the Saxon law. In the cities, some Polish court clerks embraced the magistrate’s role in religious cases. Bartłomiej Groicki, a court clerk in Cracow and author of popular legal manuals adapted from the German Sachsenspiegel and Carolina specifically for Polish readers, acknowledged that “spiritual law,” that is, Church law, was much “easier on the heretics”—it gave the heretic one more chance. The legal reform of the mid-sixteenth century that was intended to decrease the influence of the Church on the state resulted in a close entanglement of secular courts in religious matters. From the second half of the sixteenth century on, the Church records suggest that no cases of heresy, apostasy, or blasphemy were taken up by ecclesiastical courts, except those that pertained to Catholic clergy. By the seventeenth century, the secular courts were deciding what was sacred and what was not. The history of the sacred and sacrilege, their manipulation, and the role both played in power contests between the Catholic Church, the nobles, the king, and the magistrates are most starkly apparent in stories of the famous and infamous trials in which secular courts took over for the Church. The first host desecration trial of Jews in Poland erupted in Sochaczew in 1556, during Nuncio Luigi Lippomano’s visit to Poland to rescue the country from Protestantism. The trial became a subject of fervent Protestant-Catholic polemic, disseminated across Poland and Europe in printed pamphlets. Lippomano published his reports to Rome, while Protestant pamphlets used the trial to ridicule the Catholic Church and its doctrines, its efforts to execute Jews seen as desperate steps to “rescue their idolatry (which leads people to damnation) with numerous fresh lies and murders.” It was not coincidental that the trial took place a few months after the Diet of Augsburg had legitimized Protestantism in the Holy Roman Empire just to the west of Poland. Nor was it happenstance that Lippomano— sent to Poland by Pope Paul IV,




who a year earlier had issued his infamous bull, Cum nimis absurdum, which created a Jewish ghetto in Rome—played a major role. So, too, politics and religion were behind a 1630 case in Przemyśl, where a woman named Caterina Kucharzowa stole the Eucharist for use in healing magic to treat infertility. During interrogation under torture, Caterina, herself a Catholic, apparently implicated local Jews, whereupon the city council, resentful of Jewish economic competition, seized the opportunity to launch an anti-Jewish trial. This action by the city council simultaneously challenged the authority of the king, who was officially the Jews’ protector, and transformed a trial for host desecration into a battleground over royal authority in the state. Not all trials turned into anti-Jewish dramas. The outcome was dependent on the complicity of the local authorities and local judges who allowed such religious dramas to happen. These trials in which Jews stood accused of sacrilege are part of a broader struggle over the meaning of the sacred and sacred space at a time of religious and political uncertainty, with the Eucharist at its center. Because the concept of sacrilegium was implemented in the law, religious boundaries and identities were defined and reinforced, not only through religious polemic but, more important, also through criminal courts. And while in postReformation Poland this translated into enforcement of Catholic ideas of the sacred, the many trials suggest that all participants—the accusers, the accused, Jews, and Christians—were aware of the sacred boundaries set and reinforced by the courts.

1 The Meaning of the Sacred

In the thirteenth century, the medieval Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote, “The holiness of a place is directed to the holiness of man who worships God in a holy place. For it is written: ‘God did not choose the people for the place’s sake, but the place for the people’s sake (2 Macc. 5:19).’ ” Sacred space was determined by what the people did there. Ser vice to God made a place sacred. The understanding of sacred topography—within churches for Christians and synagogues for Jews—was shaped, from antiquity, by the interior topography of the destroyed temple in Jerusalem. With passage of time, and with the Jerusalem Temple long gone, both Jews and Christians gradually redefined the meaning of sacred space. Christians appropriated the concept of sacredness of the temple, transposing it directly onto their churches. They eventually cordoned off the sanctuary, which restricted the laity’s access only to certain spaces, effectively mimicking the Jerusalem Temple with its isolated holy of holies and increasingly emphasizing the role of the clergy as servants of God. Jews, in contrast, initially redefined their space in memory, not in replacement, of the destroyed temple; however, later some began to refer to a synagogue as mikdash me’at (a small temple). Still, those spaces did




not mimic the topography of the destroyed temple. The definition of sacred space helped sharpen a sense of community for both Jews and Christians. Both perceived differences between each other in terms of the relationship of the sacred to the profane and, by extension, of the sacred to the sacrilegious or the pure to the polluted. In Catholic churches, sacred spaces were those consecrated by bishops, as ruled in canon law, set aside for “the worship of God.” By the Middle Ages, the phrase “for the worship of God” acquired a more focused meaning for Catholic churches—with a “real presence” of God in the Eucharist, the communion wafer, a place containing the Eucharist was itself sacred. Non-Catholic places of worship, as neither consecrated by a bishop nor housing the wafer, could not be considered sacred. Therefore, during the Reformation, when Protestants denied the “real presence” of God in the Eucharist, in the eyes of the Church, they effectively negated any claims to the sacredness of their churches. Instead, such churches became “meetinghouses,” and in Poland, Protestants themselves embraced this term. Jewish synagogues, by these measures, could not be sacred because no bishop consecrated them and they had no sacred wafer. In Judaism, “sacred” space did not require consecration; sacralization of space was rather a consequence of the presence of the Torah and the carrying out of religious rituals. Since antiquity, in juxtaposition to non-Jews, Jews saw themselves as “a sacred community” (kehillah kedoshah), with a synagogue and cemetery as its most sacred spaces. They saw the Christian community as impure and its houses of worship no better than “houses of frivolity” or “of idolatry.” Jewish rabbis prohibited Jews from accessing church premises, and viewed church objects as “vessels of impurity,” an inversion of the Christian view that their churches were the only sacred places. In inverting the Christian view of the sacred, the Jews were turning the Christians’ argument against them—the Christian claims of purity and sacred space were turned into impurity, the salvific nature of the wafer into a defiling one.

Christian Views of Sacred Space In the Epistles of Paul, some of the earliest Christian writings, “synagogue” is explicitly juxtaposed to “a church of God.” Paul is the first to use the term ecclesia (a church), when he speaks of ecclesia dei (a church of God), a phrase

t he me a ning of t he sacr ed



later used by early Church fathers to distinguish ever more clearly between Jewish, pagan, and Christian communities and their places of worship— between the synagoga, the templum, and the ecclesia, respectively. Conversely, in the New Testament, Jewish space was increasingly considered the space of “the Other” in phrases such as “their synagogue” or “the synagogue of the Jews,” and the synagogue gradually became the symbol of Jews as Jesus’s enemies. For centuries, the synagoga and the ecclesia were symbols of theological conflicts between Jews and Christians. Medieval iconography represented ecclesia as a beautiful and triumphant crowned queen with a cross and a chalice in each hand, and the synagoga as a blindfolded woman with a broken scepter and a fallen crown. Perhaps the most inflammatory phrase in the Christian vocabulary in relation to Jews, “the synagogue of Satan,” was coined by John of Patmos, author of the Book of Revelations included in the New Testament. The phrase, found in a verse about “those who say that they are Jews but are not, but are a synagogue of Satan,” was used largely out of context by later Christian writers and polemicists. In the fourth century, John Chrysostom sought to “de-sacralize” Jews and their places of worship, and referred to synagogues as home to “robbers and demons” in his “Homilies to Judaizers” (Christians following Jewish customs). For Chrysostom, Jews and synagogues represented a competition with Christians for worshippers and thus an impediment to the expansion of Christianity. In Sermon 3 of his first homily against Judaizers, Chrysostom told a story of a woman forced by a man who called himself a Christian to enter a synagogue to swear an oath in a dispute: Three days ago—believe me, I am not lying—I saw a free woman of good bearing, modest, and a believer. A brutal, unfeeling man, reputed to be a Christian (for I would not call a person who would dare to do such a thing a sincere Christian) was forcing her to enter the shrine of the Hebrews and to swear there an oath about some matters under dispute with him. She came up to me and asked for help; she begged me to prevent this lawless violence—for it was forbidden to her, who had shared in the divine mysteries, to enter that place. I was fired with indignation, I became angry, I rose up, I refused to let her be dragged into that transgression, I snatched her from the hands of her abductor. I asked him if he were a Christian, and he said he was. . . . I told him he was no better off than a mule if he, who professed to worship Christ, would drag someone off to the dens of the



sinner s on tr i a l Jews who had crucified him. . . . After I talked with him at great length and had driven the folly of his error from his soul, I asked him why he rejected the Church and dragged the woman to the place where the Hebrews assembled. He answered that many people had told him that oaths sworn there were more to be feared.

The Christian man apparently saw the synagogue as a sacred place with special status for communication with God. Chrysostom, however, asserted that “our churches are not like that,” and seemed exasperated at the preference accorded by some Christians to synagogues: Since there are some who think of the synagogue as a holy place, I must say a few words to them. Why do you reverence that place? Must you not despise it, hold it in abomination, run away from it? They answer that the Law and the books of the prophets are kept there. What is this? Will any place where these books are be a holy place? By no means! This is the reason above all others why I hate the synagogue and abhor it. They have the prophets but do not believe them; they read the sacred writings but reject their witness— and this is a mark of men guilty of the greatest outrage. . . . Therefore, flee the gatherings and holy places of the Jews. Let no man venerate the synagogue because of the holy books; let him hate and avoid it because the Jews outrage and maltreat the holy ones, because they refuse to believe their words, because they accuse them of the ultimate impiety.

Chrysostom claimed that since books could not make a place holy, synagogues had no holiness and were just like pagan shrines, “equally profane” as “the temple of Apollo.” He warned his listeners, “That you may know that sacred books do not make a place holy but that the purpose of those who frequent a place does make it profane. . . . Although the books have their own holiness they do not give a share of it to the place because those who frequent the place are defi led. You must apply the same argument to the synagogue. Even if there is no idol there, still, demons do inhabit the place. . . . So the godlessness of the Jews and of the pagans is on a par. But the Jews practice a deceit that is more dangerous. In their synagogue stands an invisible altar of deceit on which they sacrifice not sheep and calves but the souls of men.” For John Chrysostom, the Jews presented a danger—not just over the holiness of space but, more important, over the very credibility of Christianity.




Chrysostom was correct in his understanding that the Torah scroll made a synagogue sacred. The scroll was considered the most holy object in Jewish ritual, The Mishnah, a code of Jewish law from the turn of the third century, was clear about it discussing a hierarchy of holiness in the context of selling a synagogue: “If the townspeople sell a street in town, they may buy a synagogue; [if they sell] a synagogue, they may buy an ark; an ark, they may buy wrappings for scrolls; wrappings for scrolls, they may buy scrolls; scrolls, they may buy a Torah scroll. But if they sell the Torah scroll, they may not buy scrolls; scrolls, they may not buy wrappings; wrappings, they may not buy an ark; an ark, they may not buy a synagogue; a synagogue, they may not buy a street. The same applies to surplus. A synagogue belonging to a community should not be sold to a private person because its sanctity is lowered.” According to the Mishnah, therefore, sanctity could only be increased, not decreased. The Torah scroll was the most sacred; everything else in a synagogue embodied only “the sacredness of the synagogue,” but at differing degrees, depending on an object’s relationship to the scroll. The me’ il ha-torah (the Torah mantle), which covered the Torah, for example, was more sacred than the parokhet, a covering for the ark in which the covered Torah was stored. In Chrysostom’s homilies of 386 and 387, delivered in Antioch, “synagogue” became a synonym for “impiety,” a concept that persisted in the early modern Polish church rhetoric, in which the word “synagogue” became a slur for all non-Catholic places of worship—Jewish synagogues, Greek and Eastern Orthodox as well as Protestant churches, all competitors to Catholicism. Polish Catholics argued that these were places where “the souls of men” were sacrificed, not saved. One anonymous preacher, complaining about Catholics’ lack of decorum in churches, presented nonCatholics—usually considered by Catholics as impious or infidel— as behaving better. “A Turk” who entered a Catholic church, the preacher wrote, “would rather believe that he was in a place of games, comedies, and laughter, and not in a place of religious worship. Muscovite churches [cerkwie], Lutheran ones [zbory], Turkish mosques, and Jewish synagogues are not profaned as much as are our churches with the Most Holy Sacrament inside them.” The juxtaposition of the “Most Holy Sacrament” and mosques and synagogues was stark. Though Catholic churches were the sacred spaces, the preacher claimed, Catholics behaved in a manner worse than Turks, “Muscovites,” Lutherans, and Jews, thus offending the “Most Holy Sacrament.”

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Linguistically, too, the preacher and other Poles distinguished the nonCatholic places of worship from ecclesia, the only term ever used to describe both a Catholic church (as the building) and the Church (as the “body of Christianity”). To be sure, some of these terms, as cerkwie and zbory, were used by the respective groups themselves, but these distinct terms would come to have more insidious consequences, not only delineating religious differences but also undermining legitimacy of the non-Catholic religions. The distinction between these terms was not merely semantic; it was reflected in the application of law and justice, allowing the courts to decide which spaces were sacred and which were not.

The Sacred and the Profane within Churches The contest over what space was sacred created distinctions between the synagogue and the church, and extended also to spaces within churches. A seventh-century Byzantine theologian, Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580– 662), spoke of a church building whose spaces symbolized heaven and earth: “The sanctuary reminds one of the sky, the dignity of the nave reflects the earth.” The church was like a human: “[the church’s] soul is the sanctuary; the sacred altar, the mind; and its body the nave.” According to Sharon Gerstel, Maximus associated the highest attributes (soul and mind) with the clergy and the lowest (the body) with the laity, dividing people and spaces into sacred and profane. This distinction between sacred and profane spaces was marked in the architecture of churches with visible “thresholds” between the two spaces. Both in early Christian churches and churches in medieval Italy, the sacred area was marked off by a low, often waist-high chancel. Later in the Middle Ages, both in Byzantine churches in the East and Gothic churches in northern Europe, permanent screens between the sanctuary and nave that were higher and more elaborate blocked the worshippers’ view of the sanctuary but sometimes allowed lay worshippers a fleeting “gaze” at what was happening behind the screens. To Byzantine writers, the blocked-off space of the sanctuary was “the Holy of Holies.” In western Europe, after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 formally embraced the doctrine of transubstantiation, the sanctuary became not just the site of the Mass but also, literally, locus Dei, where God was present in body in the consecrated wafer. The sanctuary, as a holy of holies, needed to be screened, affording laity at most


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a glance. The clergy’s special status became more pronounced, since they alone had access to this sacred space— but, more important, they were now handling God. Only ordained priests were capable of achieving the transformation of a wafer into Christ’s body and blood: “There is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar in the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance [transsubstantiatis], by God’s power, into his body and blood, so that in order to achieve this mystery of unity we receive from God what he received from us. None can effect this sacrament except a priest who has been properly ordained according to the church’s keys, which Jesus Christ himself gave to the apostles and their successors.” In one sweep, the council had affirmed its vision of the one true and universal Church outside of which there was no salvation, no power of the clergy, and no sanctity of the “sacrament of the altar.” It affirmed the essential connection between “bread and wine” and “body and blood.” The belief in the actual physical presence of God in churches heightened anxiety over pollution and violation of the sanctity of churches; thus, from 1215 the Church sought to set limits on what could be held inside sacred space. The Church officials decreed: We are unwilling to tolerate the fact that certain clerics deposit in churches their own and even others’ furniture, so that the churches look like lay houses rather than basilicas of God, regardless of the fact that the Lord would not allow a vessel to be carried through the temple. There are others who not only leave their churches uncared for but also leave ser vice vessels and ministers’ vestments and altar cloths and even corporals so dirty that they at times horrify some people. Because zeal for God’s house consumes us, we strictly forbid objects of this kind to be allowed into churches, unless they have to be taken in on account of enemy incursions or sudden fires or other urgent necessities, and then in such a way that when the emergency is over the objects are taken back to where they came from. We also order the aforesaid churches, vessels, corporals, and vestments to be kept neat and clean. For it seems too absurd to take no notice of squalor in sacred things when it is unbecoming even in profane things.

Contrasting “lay houses” with “basilicas of God” delineated boundaries of the sacred and the profane, not only on cleanliness of the space but also

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on decorum and pollution. Thus, for example, in the seventeenth century, the Episcopal court in Poznań registered a case between a priest and a woman; the priest had beaten her for talking during the Mass, but she was stronger and when she struck back, the priest was injured. In another case heard by the same court, the Jesuits in Poznań brought a case against Just Wonpeln, a German man who apparently had urinated in church on Good Friday. One woman said he was so wet that she had thought it was raining. The hearing centered on the question of whether Wonpeln had “polluted” the church. This was a question of utmost importance. A pollution or defilement of a church prevented the celebration of the Mass until the church could be purified. Ser vice to God demanded sacred objects, and the principle of intersection between action and sacredness and between space and objects was shared by both Jews and Christians. In Catholic churches, the most sacred object was the Eucharist, the consecrated Communion wafer; in Judaism, it was the Torah scroll. Among the most sacred vessels in “the basilicas of God” were those used at the altar: the chalice for the wine; the paten, a shallow plate or disc on which the host was held; the ciborium, a chalicelike vessel in which unused but consecrated hosts were stored; the pyx, a small receptacle in which the consecrated hosts were carried to the sick; and the monstrance, a vessel with a glass window in which the consecrated host was displayed for adoration. All of these objects, with the exception of the monstrance, had to be consecrated by a bishop or his deputy. In the sixteenth century, new items were introduced: the chalice cover, a starched and stiff linen cloth, and the chalice veil that covered the chalice and paten until the moment of Communion. Certain objects and cloths on the altar that were not liturgically required, among them the monstrance, were blessed but not consecrated: the candlesticks, whose purpose was not religious but utilitarian, to provide light; the altar cloth that covered the table; and the antependium, a large ornamented fabric covering the front of the altar. Also to be blessed were liturgically significant vestments of the clergy for the ritual of the Eucharist: most notable was the chasuble, an outer priestly garment worn during the Mass, the most ornate of vestments— depending on the time of liturgical year and clerical rank, it might be embroidered with golden thread and miniature pearls. In 1607, Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski issued a missive to all Catholic clergy in Poland, outlining the precepts of post-Tridentine Catholicism and


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mapping out in detail the layout of sacred space and objects within churches. He admonished the parish priests to ensure that their churches were in good repair. The “Sacrosanct Eucharist” was to be kept in a tabernacle above the main altar or in “another conspicuous and prominent” place. The wafers were to be stored in a silver, gold-gilded ciborium and covered with a corporal. Lighted lamps or candles were always to be placed in front of the Eucharist, “especially on festivals when people gather in church.” Priests were to have another silver vessel (a pyx) at hand for carrying the host to the infirm. The cardinal instructed the priests to store them well but “outside the tabernaculum with the Most Holy Sacrament, in which nothing except [the Sacrament] itself shall be placed.”  After discussing the baptismal font, relics, images, and symbols of the saints, and suggesting the best place for preaching, he warned against “profane objects” that might pollute the sacred space. In a section on “the sacred furniture,” Maciejowski discussed objects not considered liturgically necessary, such as antependia and tablecloths. Although not of equal holiness, all church objects had tremendous value and, not surprisingly, they arose profound desire among those outside the sacred precincts, a desire that could lead to accusations of sacrilege and to death.

Jewish Views of the Sacred Rabbis were aware that delineating sacred space bolstered religious identity, and like Catholics with their churches, they stressed the holiness of synagogues. For Jews, however, a synagogue’s sanctity derived from its symbolic association with the destroyed Jerusalem Temple, and the presence of the Torah scroll within. After the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, a shift from the lost sacrificial worship centered in the temple to the Torah became more acute, as “the institution of the rabbi and of the synagogue [which became the locus of the Torah]” became increasingly central. By the seventh century, as surviving synagogue inscriptions suggest, it was not unusual for a synagogue to be called a sacred place. In Ascalon (today’s Ashkelon), one Kyros donated a chancel screen to divide the sacred space with the Torah shrine from the rest of the synagogue, “to God and to the Holy Place.” A mosaic in Hamman Lif, in today’s Tunisia, called the synagogue sancta sinagoga. Equally important to the protection of one’s own space as sacred was the creation of a dialectic opposition that defined as “abominable” those spaces

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devoted to what the rabbis called “idolatry.” Contacts with idols, potential Jewish contributions to idol worship, and benefiting from idolatry were causes of concern noted in the Hebrew Bible that persisted throughout Jewish history. In the Mishnah—the first postbiblical code of Jewish law redacted at the turn of the third century— an entire tractate was devoted to idol worship, Avodah Zarah. It created a framework for relations between Jews and non-Jews that shaped subsequent discussions among Jewish legal scholars. By the Middle Ages, Jews came to view Christian churches as “houses of idolatry.” Israel Yuval has noted that “the language of symbols and ceremonies reveals the common means by which both religions were able to elucidate and refine their independent identities.” Even “hostility and rivalry,” he wrote, “demand a common language for formulating diametrically opposed positions, because conflicting conceptual messages can only be conveyed through symbols understood by both sides.”  Christians had more than the power of language and rituals—they controlled courts and the public rituals of punishment. Jews could turn only to language and religious rituals to distinguish their space and their kehillah kedoshah (sacred community) from that of nonJews. In the fifth-century midrash Genesis Rabba (63:6), rabbis associated identity with space in discussing the struggle of twins Jacob and Esau in Rebekah’s womb (Gen. 25:21–26). According to the midrash, when Rebekah was passing by “houses of idolatry,” Esau—the symbol of gentiles and later, more specifically, Christians—was kicking to get out. But when Rebekah passed by “synagogues and houses of study,” it was Jacob—the impersonation of “Israel”—who was kicking to get out. The anonymous Jewish author of a thirteenth-century anti-Christian polemical work called Christian churches, or “houses of idolatry” (batei avodah zarah), impure because Christians brought in and buried dead bodies there, violating the biblical prohibition against touching dead bodies, and thereby turning churches into “houses of abomination.”  The rabbis asserted that any bodies rendered spaces impure, even the bones of holy men: “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the righteous men convey impurity like those of other men.”  So, too, the Eucharist, understood by Christians as the body and blood of Christ, rendered churches impure as well: “When they defi le the abominable bread [lehem megual] and make it impure,” the author of the polemical treatise wrote, “they say: Hoc est enim corpus meum. Translated this means: ‘I alone am the body and blood.’ ” The polemicist mistranslated


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the Latin phrase Hoc est enim corpus meum, “for this is my body,” but conveyed quite accurately how Catholics understood the meaning of the Latin phrase. In Poland-Lithuania, Jewish leaders also saw the Eucharist as lehem megual (abominable bread) or lehem tame (impure bread). Joel Sirkes, an influential Polish rabbi, made a note pertaining to the presence of idols in non-Jewish homes in his commentary on a section of the Tur (a medieval code of Jewish law). He stated that in his time, Christians introduced “idols” into their houses only when they were sick, thus a Jew was allowed to rent a room from, and to, a non-Jew. This seems to be a reference to the consecrated host brought to the sick by the priest and considered to contain, or to be, God. Such views of Christian spaces and the fear of Christianization of Jewish spaces had led some medieval Jews to commit acts of martyrdom, or at least to tell stories of such acts for the edification of future generations. The Hebrew chronicles of the Crusades, for example, contain a long and complex story of martyrdom, murder, suicide, and arson in which the protagonist, Isaac ben David, burned the synagogue in Mainz, “because the enemies and the townsmen talk about turning it into a house of idolatry or a mint.” In inverting Christian views toward sacred spaces and in contrasting synagogues with the “houses of idolatry,” rabbis sought to protect their community’s holiness. In antiquity, out of respect for the synagogue, rabbis prohibited the selling of the synagogue for improper uses, “a bath house, a tannery, a ritual bath [tevilah], or the laundry,” a reservation that continued in later rabbinic commentaries and responsa. Maimonides, one of the most prominent medieval legal authorities, reinforced restrictions, advising that sellers of the synagogue “should stipulate that the buyer not turn it into a bathhouse or a tannery.” The question of selling synagogues continued to puzzle rabbis for centuries; at the turn of the eighteenth century, the Polish rabbi Joshua Falk (1680– 1755) was asked about the removal of “sanctity” from the place on which a synagogue used to stand. A synagogue in Grodno had burned down and the kahal (board of governors of a Jewish community) decided to build a synagogue in another place; in fear of desecrating the earlier spot, they erected a “tall wall” around it to prevent anyone from using the space. But “the nonJews” just kept destroying the wall, and the community leaders asked if there

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was a way “to remove the sanctity from this place and sell it.” The seventeenth-century Polish rabbi David ben Samuel Ha-Levi noted in Turei Zahav, his commentary on the Shulhan ‘Arukh, (the sixteenth-century code of Jewish law), that a synagogue could not be placed in a building that had an apartment or “something contemptible” above it, since this would be “like idolatry or pollution,” for nothing should come between prayers and the heavens. Nevertheless, considering the crowded conditions of early modern cities, Ha-Levi—citing other rabbis, notably Joseph Caro (1488–1572), a kabbalist and halakhist from Safed— approved “proper” uses of the space above the synagogue, offering as an example from his youth in Cracow a study hall (beit midrash) placed above a synagogue. Just as in churches, decorum and cleanliness also were crucial attributes of the synagogue. One seventeenth-century commentator on the Shulhan ‘Arukh, the Polish rabbi Abraham Gombiner (ca. 1633–1683), maintained that “frivolity” would turn a synagogue into a “house of idolatry.” Among activities that were prohibited— or restricted to certain conditions—were bringing animals into the synagogue or house of study, and dealings with money, unless from virtuous activities that fulfilled Jewish commandments (mitzvot). Eating and drinking were prohibited in these buildings, except for students studying the Torah full-time, since to look for food was considered a waste of time that would have been “a negation” of the Torah study. People entering a synagogue were expected to clean their shoes of mud and their clothes of any dirt. “Filthiness” disqualified any place in which a Jew could say the prayer Shem’a Israel; among other places questionable for the prayer were a toilet and a bathhouse, or any other place in which there was excrement or water for washing feet, but “secular matters discussed in the holy tongue were allowed” to be said there. By the Middle Ages, some Jewish women avoided entering the synagogue during their periods of menstruation, except on High Holidays. This custom was not necessarily halakhically sanctioned—rabbinic opinions about it were divided—but the notion that women were impure and imparted impurity through their menstrual bleeding was powerful enough for some to seek to avoid polluting what they considered “sacred space.”  Despite their perceived holiness, synagogues, like churches, also had monetary value, inside and outside, which complicated social hierarchy and the concept of sacred space; synagogue seats, for example, could be purchased and pledged for loans. In his commentary on the Shulhan ‘Arukh,


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the seventeenth-century Polish rabbi David Ha-Levi acknowledged that there was no longer any specific order of seating in synagogues, “because seats are now bought.”  The Council of Lithuania recognized synagogue seats as an asset. Such an arrangement created a potential for a transgression of religious boundaries that threatened the sanctity of the synagogue, when, for example, ownership of seats was claimed by Christians to whom debts were owed by Jews. This kind of financial entanglement provoked inclusion of a clause in the privilege granted to Jews of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by King August III in 1702, by which the king “guaranteed” that seats in synagogue only could be repossessed after all other belongings had been seized, and that a synagogue seat in Christian possession was to be sold as soon as possible to “another Jew or Jewess for a just price.”  But it could have been worse—in 1684, an entire synagogue came into the hands of nonJews, when the synagogue in Brześć (Brest Litovsk) was sealed by the chamberlain of Brześć (podkomorzy) because a Jew, Chem Nachmanowicz, had failed to pay off a debt. It took the Jewish community’s intervention with the queen, Maria Kazimiera, to unseal the synagogue. Synagogues also could be locked up by Christian authorities if Jews failed to pay taxes, as was provided by one decree issued in 1659 by the tax collector for the Sandomierz region. From the earliest times, rabbinic sources have exuded anxiety over sharing space with gentiles, regarding both entering their space and letting them enter Jewish space— sacred or not— and also about handling objects owned by gentiles possibly to be used in idol worship. Jews were prohibited from dwelling in “the houses of the uncircumcised,” and renting houses to and from gentiles raised questions about introducing idols into these dwellings. Rabbis were reluctant to allow a Jewish house to be located close to “the house of idols.” They stressed that if a wall of the Jewish house collapsed, it could not be rebuilt in ways that would make it touch the “house of idols,” since it would effectively prop up, and thus benefit, “the house of idols.” The wall should be built farther away, and the space in between should be used for refuse in order to prevent expansion of the “house of idolatry.” Rabbis warned against profiting from the use of stones or other remaining building materials from a collapsed “house of idolatry.” Prohibition was even stronger if a wall was commonly shared by the two buildings, since the “house of idolatry” would then benefit directly from the Jews’ construction. Theoretical as they might seem, such persistent anxieties

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over contact and space are testimony both to the proximity in which Jews and Christians often lived, and to the danger, as the rabbis saw it, of such proximity. In 1660, for example, the Jesuit College in Pinsk filed a protest in the court against a local Jew by the name of Hirsz, accusing him of stealing bricks from their church and their residency, both burned by the Cossacks. Hirsz secretly moved some of the bricks that had been saved for the reconstruction of the Jesuit buildings and used them to build, or perhaps rebuild, his own house and brewery. The stolen bricks were apparently recognized by a local Jesuit priest, whereupon the Jesuits demanded monetary damages of thirty złoty. In another case, violating yet another rabbinic prohibition, Jews took part in building a church. In 1711, a lawsuit was filed against the Minsk kahal (leaders of the local Jewish community) by a nobleman, Jarosz Mackiewicz, who represented Jews living in his part of the city, which was exempt from municipal taxation and obligations. Mackiewicz charged that “infidel Jews having borrowed money from the most reverend fathers Jesuits of the Minsk monastery to satisfy their needs of whatever kind, had committed to pay interest and to supply bricks and stone for the construction of the church.” Unable to pay, the kahal had begun to force all Jews in Minsk, including those living in Mackiewicz’s independent jurydyka (an area in a city, excluded from the city’s jurisdiction), to cart the bricks and help build the church. Mackiewicz argued on the basis of the violation of his jurydyka’s political jurisdiction, but this case clearly had a religious significance since Jews were contributing to the construction of a Catholic church— a building that some rabbis viewed as “a house of idols” or as beit tiflut (a house of frivolity) itself a play on the inverse meaning, beit tefilah (a house of prayer) or beit tefilot (the house of prayers). Anxiety over abetting “idol worship” prompted a question posed to the sixteenth-century Polish rabbi Benjamin Slonik: Were Jews allowed to lend clothes to Christians on Christian holidays, even if Christians borrowed them to wear to church? Slonik reasoned that since Christians were not required to wear attractive clothes to church and did so only for their own enjoyment, lending clothes did not enable idolatry. Rabbis also prohibited the enjoyment of anything that might have been used in “idol worship,” including musical instruments and ornaments; their sentiment was so strong that even the shade provided by a “house of idol worship” on a hot, sunny day could not be enjoyed.


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This negative attitude of rabbis toward Christian religious space translated into a similar attitude toward Christian ritual objects, sometimes referred to as klei tum’ah (vessels of impurity) or ti’uv (an abomination). The boundary drawn between the sacred and the ungodly was clear— Christian ritual objects were considered abominable. But the halakhah (Jewish law) was even more complex: Could Jews use candles known to be used for idol worship? What about clothes of the priests, books, or vessels used in gentile worship? Unlike Christian reformers, who viewed such objects as “matters of indifference,” rabbis recognized the religious meaning Christians attached to these objects, but seem to have agreed on different degrees of contact and use, depending on whether the objects were required for idol worship. Wax was not allowed if used in the “idol worship” itself, but if given to Jews as a pledge, some rabbis did allow it. Still, there was a strict prohibition against use of such wax or oil for Jewish ritual purposes during Sabbath, Hanukkah, or in synagogue. In his commentary, Turei Zahav, David Ha-Levi said that “lamps, which are called lichter [and] which are in the beit elilim (house of idols) cannot be used in a synagogue.” The expression beit elilim (a house of idols) clearly was not a theoretical “house of idolatry,” but a Christian church in light of the specific contemporary name used in reference to the lamps. Jewish “sacred space” and “sacred times” were to be protected from such pollution. The sixteenth-century rabbi Moses Isserles of Cracow commented that, just as such wax or candles could not be used for Jewish rituals, no piece of a cloak used by a priest should be used for making a tallit (prayer shawl) or any other ritual object required to fulfill Jewish commandments. (Isserles did not mention how Jews might have obtained priestly clothing, but other sources make it clear that this clothing often was purchased, or acquired through accepting stolen objects as pledges for loans.) Then there was the question of profit from objects that might be used for gentile worship. If ritual objects or objects that could be used for other purposes were intended solely for idol worship, they were prohibited from use or profit, and Jews were not permitted to sell them to gentiles. This rule was behind an argument that Moses Isserles made about water. Technically, water could be used for many purposes, but in Christian Poland, it also had a ritual use— as baptismal water. In a gloss on the section of the Shulhan ‘Arukh dealing with accessories to idolatry, Isserles prohibited Jews from selling water “to an idolater” if it was known that “he wanted to make it into water for baptism.” However, if objects could be used for other purposes

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and it was known they were not intended for use in religious ser vices, Jews could sell them, use them, and profit from them. Clergy’s cloaks were cited as an example; provided that they were not used exclusively for religious services, such cloaks could be handled by Jews. Still, some Jews ignored rabbinic prohibitions and “profited” from abetting what the rabbis considered “idol worship.” In 1639, the masters of the Christian guild of bookbinders in Lublin fi led a protest against a Jew, “Chaim the son of Kopel the Jew” and his brother, Smul, for binding Christian books, including those used in Christian worship: “rosary books with images [z figurami], about two large bundles.” Another Christian bookbinder, Stanisław, told the court that “Just after Christmas I went to this Jew, Smul, who binds books and I saw in a press a breviary bound in leather and an officium [Catholic prayer book] that he was gilding with gold. And when I wanted to look at this breviary, he ripped it out of my hands and threw it among other books, and he took the officium and hid it and after that he cursed me with shameful words,” whereupon he attacked Stanisław, who managed to escape. In his testimony, Stanisław recounted another incident: “Two or three weeks before, I visited Father Jan in the church of Mary the Virgin, for whom I had bound two books, and Father Jan then told me that the Jew, Chaim, had bound an antiphonal, a missal, and a Psalter for the [local] nuns.” Th is case was clearly about economic competition, but there was an undeniable undertone of an anxiety about the sacred. Similar tensions were manifested when Jews dealt in objects stolen from churches. For Jews to be allowed to use gentile ritual objects for purposes not related to Jewish religious practice, such objects had to be “invalidated” through an act known as bitul. Bitul was an act of devaluation of the “idols” that only could be performed by the “idol worshippers” themselves. Jews could not do so, although some might have engaged in an act of desecration of objects they considered “abominable.” Bitul’s purpose was to “de-sacrate,” that is, to remove the sacredness from ritual objects, rendering them impossible to use in worship and thus permissible for Jewish use or profit. The Mishnah provided guidelines on what constituted an effective “nullification” of an idol, which were expanded and clarified in later codes of Jewish law. Among the possible methods of bitul was the use of “idols” as pledges. Some rabbis argued that objects pledged to Jews by gentiles lost their “sacredness” simply by having been pledged, and, thus, the separate act of bitul


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was no longer necessary. But, according to the Talmud, this was true only if the gentiles’ intention was not to retrieve the pledged item; in such cases, pledging constituted bitul and allowed Jews to profit from such objects. The same was true for objects sold to a Jewish smelter, but not for objects sold to a non-Jewish smelter; a sale to a Jewish smelter indicated that these ritual objects were abandoned and no longer intended for idol worship. However, if the pledged ritual object was intended to be retrieved, it was not fully “annulled,” for it was assumed that the non-Jew who had deposited it as a pledge still considered it to be usable for worship. In arguing that Jews could not benefit from objects pledged with the intention to retrieve, rabbis feared that Jews would violate both the prohibition against profiting from “idols” and the prohibition against facilitating idol worship, the latter one of major concern in regulating Jewish-gentile interaction. Paradoxically, thus, the rabbis saw significance both in the sacredness that Christians attached to their ritual objects and in the role that Jews played in removing the sacredness from these objects. Th is tension between disregard for the sacredness of “idols” and acknowledgment of it was potently evident in their writings.

Blasphemy, Heresy, and “The Body and Blood of Christ” One of the Catholic doctrines that unsettled and profoundly affected Jews— and, after the Reformation, also Protestants—was the doctrine of transubstantiation, according to which the Communion bread was turned into “the body and blood of Christ” upon the priest’s consecration. Though the term “transubstantiation” was first used in the eleventh century, it was not formally embraced by the Church until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215; debates on the nature of the communion of “bread and wine” had ensued from the earliest days of Christianity. Many Christians, lay and clergy, had expressed doubts about their substance and significance. These doubts were enhanced by the ambiguity of Jesus’s words as reported in the Gospels. In Matthew, Jesus offered bread to his disciples, saying: “Take, eat: this is my body,” and, in Luke, a phrase, “this do in remembrance of me,” was added to suggest a more symbolic than real meaning of the ritual. Preaching before Easter, Bishop Ambrose of Milan (ca. 338–397) addressed such questions directly: “Perhaps you may say: ‘I see something else, how do you tell me that I receive the Body of Christ.’ ” And elsewhere, again, the bishop stated more

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specifically: “You, perhaps, say: ‘My bread is ordinary. . . . I do not see the appearance of blood.’ ” There was a sensory disconnect between the taste of bread and the theological concept of the body of Christ. Ambrose’s contemporary, Cyril of Jerusalem (315–387) sought to convince his flock that the “bread” was not regular bread: “Do not then think of the elements as mere bread and wine. . . . Though sense suggests the contrary, let faith be your stay. Instead of judging the matter by taste, let faith give you an unwavering assurance that you have been privileged to receive the Body and the Blood of Christ.” The bread and wine were, in fact, Cyril asserted, the body and blood of Christ. But centuries later, Jacques of Vitry (ca. 1160/70–1240 or 1244), a French theologian, saw the Eucharist as a different kind of food: “Th is is not bodily food but food of the soul; not of the flesh but of the heart.” It may have been sensory confusion that led the Western Church eventually to adopt a distinct wheaten wafer for the Eucharist to distinguish it from “daily bread.” The Eastern Church continued to use leavened bread for Communion, perhaps because it accepted a different date for the passion of Christ that was based on the Gospel of John, and placed it the day before Jewish Passover, meaning that Jesus would have eaten regular leavened bread, not unleavened. In Western Christianity, which saw the “Last Supper” as the Passover seder meal, it was assumed that the bread used by Jesus was unleavened, in accordance with the biblical requirements for Passover. By the eleventh century, the Roman Church was using a thin wafer, baked from a particular type of wheat between two special iron molds, changes introduced gradually from an earlier period. In the ninth century, the first decisive steps were taken to separate the laity from the Eucharist. If, before then, the laity had received the eucharistic bread or the host in their hands, by the ninth century, direct contact by hand with the “holy bread” was restricted to the clergy and the host was now placed in the mouths of the laity. Likewise, the making of the bread became limited to clergy, with unauthorized use prohibited, including for private worship. By the thirteenth century, bishops and synodal legislation stipulated details of preparing and administering the host. The bishop of Worcester, William of Blois, emphasized: “The most diligent care must be taken over the materials used in the sacrament, so that the hosts are made of pure wheaten grain. The ministers of the church should be dressed in surplices and sit in a proper place while they make the hosts. The instrument in which the hosts are roasted should be


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coated with wax, not with oil or any other fat. Those hosts of the appropriate color and roundness are to be offered to the table of the altar.” Since the host was fragile, it needed special protection; hence, the Fourth Lateran Council issued a canon: “We decree that in all churches the chrism and the eucharist be kept in properly protected places provided with locks and keys, that they may not be reached by rash and indiscreet persons and used for impious and blasphemous purposes. But if he to whom such guardianship pertains should leave them unprotected, let him be suspended from office for a period of three months. And if through his negligence an execrable deed should result, let him be punished more severely.” The Church’s sanction of the doctrine of transubstantiation and its acute concern with protecting the eucharistic wafer was likely a result of challenges the Church was facing from heretical movements, most crucially the Albigensian (or Cathar) heresy, active in southern Europe from the midtwelfth century. The Cathars’ views of the Eucharist outraged the Church officials, as the prominent Dominican inquisitor Bernard Gui noted in his manual for fellow inquisitors: “Then they [Cathars] attack and vituperate, in turn, all the sacraments of the Church, especially the sacrament of the eucharist, saying that it cannot contain the body of Christ, for had this been as great as the largest mountain Christians would have entirely consumed it before this. They assert that the host comes from straw, that it passes through the tails of horses, to wit, when the flour is cleaned by a sieve (of horse hair); that, moreover, it passes through the body and comes to a vile end, which, they say, could not happen if God were in it.” The formal acceptance of transubstantiation by the Church as its official doctrine provided official grounds for charges of heresy and blasphemy against those who denied it. Fierce debates about transubstantiation and its meaning continued well into the fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth century, contributing to the breakup of Western Christianity during and after the Reformation, as treatises promoting or disavowing the presence of Christ’s real blood in this world were written and disseminated. The formal acceptance of transubstantiation also provoked a rise of new rituals related to the Eucharist, including the festival of Corpus Christi, and a large number of new eucharistic cult sites. Cult sites promoting miraculous hosts were not unequivocally embraced by the Catholic Church and were investigated by Church officials. Thus, in 1405–1407, Jan Hus, a theologian and reformer in Bohemia, as a member of a

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commission summoned by Sbinko, the archbishop of Prague, investigated a major pilgrimage site in Wilsnack, a town in the Mark Brandenburg of northern Germany, which claimed a “miraculous” host (see figs. 13 and 14). In De Sanguine Christi, a treatise written in response to the investigation, Hus warned Christians not to accept the claim of “false prophets” that “the blood of Christ” was in the Eucharist; the blood of Christ was only to be found in the “glorious body of Christ sitting to the right of God the Father.” In several places, Hus wrote that “false miracles” had been promoted by “evil priests . . . [who] seduce people because of avarice.” A few years later, Hus himself came to be viewed as a threat to the Church for criticizing transubstantiation and for promoting vernacular preaching and lay access, both to the Bible and communion under both bread and wine. In 1415, the Council of Constance condemned him to death at the stake. Nonetheless, the “Hussite” heresy spread quickly in east-central Europe, and debates over the nature of the eucharistic bread continued among the Catholic clergy for decades. The doctrine of transubstantiation arrived in Poland via the 1267 Church Council of Breslau, and by 1320, a eucharistic cult apparently existed in Cracow, then the capital of Poland. By the fi fteenth century, as the statutes of the 1420 provincial synod in Poland suggest, the festival of Corpus Christi, celebrating the Eucharist as the body of Christ, had entered the Polish Catholic liturgical calendar. That synod, convened in response to Hussite challenges to Catholic doctrines, affirmed the presence of both the “body and blood of Christ” in the Eucharist and contested the calls of “heretics” for Communion under both species of bread and wine; it demanded punishment of the heretics and condemnation of their practices as “illicit” and “sacrilegious.” Following the Council of Constance, the 1420 Polish synod also condemned Hus himself. Four years later, after the synod, the Polish Church found an ally in King Władysław Jagiełło, who issued a royal decree “against heretics and their supporters.” A century elapsed before the next wave of “heretics” and decrees against them by the Church and the secular leaders in Poland. In the wake of the Reformation, in 1525, Prince Janusz of Mazovia issued a decree contra dissidentes (against the dissidents), banning followers of Martin Luther from “cities, towns, and villages,” and prohibiting anyone from promoting “the false doctrine of Luther in any sermon, whether in Latin, or German, or any other language” in Warsaw, capital city of the Duchy. The decree banned books


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that supported Lutheran ideas, under the penalty of death and confiscation of property. In 1543, referring back to King Jagiełło’s 1424 decree, the Polish parliament, the Sejm, issued a “constitution” against all religious novelties in the Kingdom of Poland. One of the most threatening aspects of this new “heresy” was the Catholic Church’s perception that in the Protestants’ denials of transubstantiation, the sanctity of the Church itself had come under assault. In Reformation Poland, sophisticated theological debates about transubstantiation and bleeding hosts were largely muted; a cruder version of the doctrine was propagated to promote popular piety. Suddenly, conditions were ripe for the medieval “gentile tale,” as Miri Rubin named it, accusing Jews of desecrating the host. Host desecration charges launched in criminal courts became platforms for both combating religious dissent and achieving political goals.

Eucharistic Miracles and Medieval Accusations against Jews Miracles of the host’s transformation into bleeding flesh began to be told as early as the ninth century. In 844, the Christian theologian Paschasius, in a controversial work, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini (Of the Body and the Blood of the Lord ), told of a miracle witnessed by a man skeptical that the Eucharist is the body of Jesus. One Sunday, during the ritual of the Eucharist, “a [form] like a young child [was] lying on the altar. When the presbyter extended his hand and broke the bread, an angel of the Lord, with a knife in hand, descended from heaven and sacrificed the child, pouring its blood into the chalice. And when the presbyter broke the bread into small pieces, the angel cut up the child’s members into little parts. . . . When the old man came forward to receive communion, a piece of flesh soaked in blood was given to him.” But the tale of the Jewish desecration of the host did not appear until the thirteenth century, when in 1213, Pope Innocent III wrote to the archbishop of Sens in support of a newly converted Jew, relating “the wonders of God”: Recently a certain Christian woman was living in the home of this man’s father, and by Jewish seductions, she was estranged from the Catholic Faith, so that she constantly asserted, while she was under the shadow of the Jewish error, that Christ could not profit or injure her, and that bread

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sinner s on tr i a l taken from any ordinary table is as efficacious as the host of Christ which is taken at the altar. Fearing the punishment she would incur if she were publicly to deny the Christian faith, she pressed on to the church along with the other Christians on the Feast of Resurrection, then at hand, and she received the eucharist, and hid it in her mouth. Then, giving it into the hands of the father of the above mentioned N., then named Isaac, she burst forth in these words: “Behold my Savior, as the Christians say.” Just as he wanted to put this into a certain empty box which he had in the closet, he was called to his door, and fearing lest someone by chance come into his house, he unwittingly and on account of his haste, placed it into another box, in which were seven Parisian livres. He then opened the door to the one who was knocking. When hurrying from the door he returned to the closet and did not find it in the empty box in which he believed he had placed the said host, he looked into the other in which he kept the money, and he saw it full—not with coins—but with wafers. Astonished and trembling he called together his friends and after telling them the above story as it happened, he began in their presence to turn the wafers with a straw, in order to see the one that had been somewhat moist when given to him, that he might separate it from the others, hoping that, after this one had been removed, the coins would turn back to their original nature. When he was unable to distinguish this one from the others, the people standing about perceived the greatness of the divine miracle and decided to become converted to Christianity.

This story entered the lore of Christian exempla to become a foundation for later tales of desecration and miracles retold in sermons and books. The 1213 version contained elements that would become the core of later host desecration narratives: unbelieving Jews, a Christian female servant, a miracle (though not yet involving bleeding and Jewish acts of cruelty), and a conversion of the Jews. It would take another eighty years or so for the first extensive, dramatic, and deadly version of the legend to emerge. In 1290, in Paris, a Jew from Rue des Jardins was arrested and charged with having desecrated the host. As Jean de Thilrode, of the monastery of Saint-Bavon in Ghent, described it four years later: To all those who are about to hear and see the present report of the official of the Paris curia: we desire not to hide that a certain Jew living in Paris had a Christian serving girl from whom he bought for ten pounds a consecrated host. She herself in truth presented it to her master, which done he placed the host on a table and had other Jews join him, saying “are not


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these Christians fools to believe in this host?” Taking knives, styles and other instruments, they wished to destroy the host, which they were not able to do. At length a certain one among them took up a large knife, struck the host; and it divided into three parts, and it bled continuously. At the sight of this miracle, many of the Jews converted. Then the host was placed in a cauldron full of water that it might be boiled and destroyed. The host, however, through divine grace changed itself into flesh and blood. Having seen these miracles, John the bearer of these facts, with his whole family was converted to the Catholic faith. These things occurred in the year of our Lord 1290, on the day of the Resurrection of the Lord.

Characters in the late medieval stories of the eucharistic miracles included both Christians (especially doubting priests, as in the famous miracle of Bolsena) and Jews, but the tale of host desecration by Jews took on a life of its own and developed into a stock tale in which an act of desecration was followed by miracles, and then either by punishment of the Jewish culprits, their conversion to Christianity, or both. As Caroline Bynum has observed, “the desire for miraculous matter and hatred of the Jews collaborated, each supporting the other. Thus, if holy matter was necessary, Jewish desecration might seem necessary as well.” During the early years of the Reformation, the story returned to Paris in 1535 as a push back from defenders of Catholicism in a splendid eucharistic procession following widespread dissemination of placards that attacked the Mass and the Eucharist. Also in post-Reformation Poland, Jews and accusations against them became part of the anti-Protestant push back.

The Protestant Challenge From the earliest years of the Reformation, Protestants began to challenge Catholic claims of the sacred by assailing Catholic rituals, sacred objects, and sacred space. The battle over the meaning of the sacred was fought “in the attempt to reorder religion.” Protestants stripped altars, removed paintings, and reorganized church space. Their actions were motivated at the core by a strongly held belief that it was their church, not the Catholic Church, that was ecclesia Dei (the church of God) or, as one seventeenth-century Polish writer, Maciej Rosentreter, put it: “the true evangelical church,” in opposition to “the papist church” with its “false and dead” teachings. For

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many European Protestant theologians, preachers, and lay activists, Catholic churches with their liturgical objects became “indifferent” spaces at best and, at worst, places of idolatrous worship. In his 1525 treatise, “Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments,” Martin Luther wrote of clerical vestments and ritual: “Now, the elevation of the sacrament, wearing the tonsure, putting on the chasuble and alb, etc. are matters concerning which God has given neither commandments nor prohibitions. Therefore, everyone is to have freedom of choice to do these things or refrain from doing them.” Three years later, Luther reiterated the point in his “Confession concerning Christ’s Supper”: “Images, bells, eucharistic vestments, church ornaments, altar lights and the like I regard as things indifferent. Anyone who wishes may omit them.” He admonished the faithful against vanity in the worship of God. True worship, he wrote, “takes place devoid of all splendor and does not appeal to the eye according to the flesh; but it fi lls the heart, which otherwise neither heaven nor earth could fill. . . . That is then a different ornament and embellishment from the golden chasuble, yes, from imperial, royal, papal crowns; the ornaments and glitter of all churches and all the world are as refuse compared with this glorious remembrance of Christ.” One needed “no money or bronze” to worship God, but Luther warned that it was not easy for some to accept this kind of worship: “What will happen to the person who does not want to grant such adornment and embellishment to his God?” he asked, and answered rhetorically, “No doubt, he will become blind and mad, and in the devil’s name he will proceed instead to adorn images of wood and stone, paint tablets and walls, embellish altars and churches, clothe the sacrificing priests with gold and silk, and use all his belongings and power for religious foundations, cloisters, pilgrimages, and many other types of false, condemned, self-worship.” He quickly clarified, “Not that I reject entirely external adornment; but it should not be called a divine worship, much less should it hinder or obscure this one true worship.” What the Catholics did was a mere spectacle; “they place the host in the monstrance and pyx, for a procession,” performing “nothing but jugglery with it.” Luther protested, “The same holy church is now the holy place of sacrilege.” Still, Luther warned against those—like Andreas Karlstadt, a German Protestant theologian—who followed the scripture to the letter, abandoning rituals when in doubt about how Jesus might have performed them. “And since we do not know and the text does not state,” Luther protested, para-


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phrasing these theologians, “whether red or white wine was used, whether wheat rolls or barley bread were used we must by reason of doubt at this point refrain from observing the Last Supper, until we become certain about it, so that we do not make any external detail differ a hairsbreadth from what Christ’s example sets forth.” Luther condemned “the mad fanat icism” of those who see themselves as “prophets, who boast of daily speaking with God.” They made Luther himself change his mind about some rituals of the Catholic Church: “And although I had intended also to abolish the elevation [of the host],” he wrote, “now I will not do it, to defy for a while the fanatic spirit, since he [Karlstadt] would forbid it and consider it a sin and make us depart from our liberty.” Although Luther was adamant in asserting that neither priest nor vessels nor vestments had any special sanctity, he did not radically challenge the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, according to which bread and wine were turned into the body and blood of Christ by priests’ actions. Luther considered the Eucharist to be both the bread and the body of Christ, a doctrine that came to be known as consubstantiation. In instructions to the visitors of parish pastors, Luther provided talking points on “the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord.” First, he wrote, “they are to believe that the true body of Christ is in the bread and the true blood of Christ is in the wine. . . . It is to be remembered that so great a miracle happens through no merit of the priest but because Christ has ordained that when we commune his body is present, just as the sun rises daily without any merit of ours but solely since God has so ordained.” Indeed, when it came to the sacrament of the Eucharist, or the Last Supper, Luther was battling not only the Catholics but also more radical reformers or “our fanatics,” as he called them, like Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Stenckefeld, and Karlstadt, who “represented [the holy sacrament] as mere bread and wine, and thus,” in Luther’s mind, “misled many thousand souls.” The reformers, according to Luther, considered him and his followers to be “cannibals, blood-drinkers, man-eaters,” just like “the papists,” the insults that hurt Luther the most, making it necessary for him to defend his ideas about the Eucharist and consubstantiation until his death. By the 1530s, the Protestants known as sacramentarians—including Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Stenckfeld, and Karlstadt in the German-speaking lands, and Guillaume Ferel and Antoine Marcourt in France—had become vocal in their public challenging of the Catholic Church, the Eucharist, and,

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by extension, the unified “body of Christian polity.” And so, when John Calvin, in his Short Treatise on the Holy Supper of 1541, further addressed the question about the Eucharist and the eucharistic ritual, he was not alone. Though Calvin tried to distance himself from Zwingli’s and Oecolampadius’s radicalism, he condemned the Mass as an abomination, blasphemy, and idolatry, and called transubstantiation “an error which the devil has sown.” But Calvin admitted that the question of the Eucharist—“How . . . to understand the words in which the bread is called the body of Christ, and the wine his blood”—had been “much debated both anciently and at the present time.” For him, the bread remained bread, the wine remained wine. They were “visible signs, which represent to us the body and blood, but that this name and title of body and blood is given to them because they are as it were instruments by which the Lord distributes them to us.” A few years later, Calvin elaborated in his Institutes of the Christian Religion: “Bread and wine are signs, which represent to us the invisible food that we receive from the flesh and blood of Christ. . . . Since, however, this mystery of Christ’s secret union with the devout is by nature incomprehensible, he shows its figure and image in visible signs best adapted for our small capacity. Indeed, by giving guarantees and tokens, he makes it certain for us as if we had seen with our own eyes. For this very familiar comparison penetrates into even the dullest minds: just as bread and wine sustain physical life, so are souls fed by Christ.” And, attacking the Catholic Mass, Calvin insisted that the sacrifice happened only once, and has never been repeated: “We now understand the purpose of this mystical blessing, namely to confirm for us the fact that the Lord’s body was once for all so sacrificed for us that we may now feed upon it, and by feeding feel in ourselves the working of that unique sacrifice.” The ritual and eucharistic ceremony, thus, were “indifferent”: “But as for the outward ceremony of the action—whether or not the believers take it in their hands, or divide it among themselves, or severally eat what has been given to each; whether they hand the cup back to the deacon or give it to the next person; whether the bread is leavened or unleavened; the wine red or white—it makes no difference. These things,” Calvin argued, “are indifferent, and left to the church’s discretion.” With this redefinition of the Lord’s Supper, Calvinist churches were also redefining sacred space. There was no need to divide spaces for the “most sacred sacrament” from laity, as in Catholic churches and, to a lesser extent, in Lutheran. Lee Palmer Wandel writes that “Within Reformed churches, the


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traditional spatial division of laity and clergy, secular and sacred, was erased completely . . . [n]o longer a map of a world divided between sacred and secular.” Polish reformers, too, were heatedly debating the meaning of the Eucharist; many, following Calvin, agreed that bread and wine represented Christ’s body and blood only symbolically: “Bread is bread, and wine is wine.” At the 1558 Council in Lipnik, reformers quoted Calvin’s Institutes as support for their own assertion that, while the Lord’s Supper was important, the kind of bread or wine used was not; bread could be “leavened or unleavened,” and wine, “red or white.” In 1570, at the council in Cracow, Mikołaj Rej, a prominent Polish poet, protested using a crude metaphor for the idea of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist: “If I am to believe that here is the whole Christ, I am afraid I might choke on his shin.” The council subsequently erased “the word corporis [of the body] and inserted substantialem preasentiam Christi [substantial presence of Christ],” though some wanted to add veram (true) to reflect the true presence of Christ. Three years later, in Poznań, the council remained ambiguous, claiming that their views differed from Calvin’s emphasis on the bread as a symbol of Jesus’s body; they seem to have embraced the Lutheran idea that Christ was in the Eucharist, but at the same time that the bread itself was no more than bread. Decades later, Calvin’s idea of indifference returned to another council: “As for the ceremonies, especially in the ser vice of Lord’s Holy Body and Blood, we leave it to the conscience of the elders . . . whether the bread should be broken and taken into hands.” Like their Western counterparts, in fear of committing idolatry, Polish Protestants displayed anxiety about genuflection during the “Lord’s Supper,” which some considered “dangerous, leading to idolatry,” and, not surprisingly, scorned the Catholic notions of sacred spaces and objects. They sought to protect their fellow believers from perhaps an unwitting sin of idolatry, but were aware that people’s understanding of sacred spaces had been shaped by the presence of the Catholic Church. In 1556, Polish reformers sought advice from Bohemian Brethren as to whether in churches seized by Protestants “images should be thrown out [of churches] before acceptance of the Body and Blood of Lord Christ. . . . And whether one could distribute and consume Lord’s Body and Blood without having removed images.” The Bohemian emissary answered by insisting that Polish congregations make that decision for themselves. Whereupon, a certain Reverend Krowicki took a cautious path: “The images and

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other church vessels should not be thrown out too hastily, especially among those people who do not yet know about [these matters] and are not adequately instructed in God’s word [to understand] why this [removal of images] might be happening.” If there were churches “already purified, services should be held in them”; if not, the reverend conceded (perhaps evoking Luther’s “indifference”) that images should not discourage anyone from religious services, unless offensive to someone, in which case they should be covered. Another, more radical, participant in the debate cited the Bible in urging for a total “purification” of churches rescued from “this papist idolatrous abomination.” The Bohemian emissary now sided with Krowicki, and cautioned against radicalism in fear that uneducated people would turn away from Christianity should churches be purged before proper religious instruction. To prevent idolatry among the commoners, some reformers demanded that Catholic churches be locked, Catholic clergy be prevented from entering them, and Protestant ministers sent, if available, to serve in their stead. In 1570, during a general council in Sandomierz, in which principal Protestant groups agreed to work together, the reformers concluded that if “we cannot give them the medicine, we should not allow them to be poisoned.” All vestiges of Catholic worship were to go. Th at same year in Cracow, another Protestant council ruled that “Should any papist superstitions or ceremonies, such as exorcisms, images, organs, unnecessary candles and others, be preserved in any churches, they should be immediately thrown out, and abandoned, lest we be perceived as being permissive to the anti- Christ.” As late as 1601, the Protestant council in Kock was issuing instructions on how to purify churches. Letters were to be sent to ministers suspected of noncompliance. One was ordered “to demolish an altar and to bring a table with an elegant tablecloth,” and another “to remove images, and demolish the altar, and replace it with a table.” The council leaders insisted that these things be done “because we are accused of being a papist concubine.” Almost any use of candles, tablecloths, or other paraphernalia of religious ser vices was suspect. The churches were to be clean and in good order, especially with regard to “superstition and idolatry.” Participants at a 1561 colloquium who reported that a certain pastor kept candles and used tablecloths and special “towels” during the eucharistic ser vice, received assurances that “the candles and tablecloths used during ser vices are only used out of necessity, not out of superstition, idolatry, or worship.”


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Protestants did accept that some ornaments and equipment were necessary for respectable worship. In Toruń in 1595, the council elders ruled that “patrons and community elders should assure that churches, or places where God’s ser vice is performed, must not be neglected, but rather repaired and decorated immediately,” with a single caveat that “decorations leading to idolatry” be prohibited. Another council ruled that each church “was to have their [sic] own tablecloth, a cup, a paten, a baptismal bowl, and a covered table. And these must not be turned for common use;” “crosses and exorcisms” also were banned. In the mid-seventeenth century, a prominent Protestant writer and preacher, Wojciech Węgierski, warned against the worship of images and against costly ornaments of churches: The Holy Scripture says that images are doctores mendacii, teachers of lies, and not only is it truly worthless to make them superstitiously but even more so it is to place them in churches, to bow or prostrate oneself before them, worship them, and honor them in any way whatsoever. . . . This is what the evangelical faith teaches and warns about that no images be placed superstitiously in churches; let alone that people might bow or prostrate themselves before images and idols, works of human hands. I shall not even mention that Holy Scripture and God’s commandment is violated not only by those who make images: engraved, or of gold, or silver, or wood, or stone, or wax . . . but even more by those who prostrate themselves, who kiss them, who carry them in their arms, who orga nize processions with them, who light candles before them, who dress them in costly vestments, and decorate them with gold, silver, and precious stones.

While some mocked Catholic churches and sought to redefine the geography of Protestant church buildings and their contents, some questioned the very need for a church building itself, contesting anything considered sacred by Catholics. At the turn of the seventeenth century, Krzysztof Kraiński, a prominent Polish Protestant preacher and leader, wrote in response to Jakub Wujek, a famous contemporary Polish Jesuit writer: “Wrongly says the Jesuit in his Postylla that magnificent churches are to be built for altars and sacrifices,” churches were not built “to lock up God, nor for Mass sacrifices, but rather for preaching God’s word, appropriate for prayers and divine service.” Kraiński evoked the first Christians as models for architecture and adornment of Christian worship: “The first Christians built simple churches,

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which had more in common with the poverty of Christ than with the pride of anti-Christ. . . . Anti-Christ needed to sit in costly and imposing churches, not in the simple and unassuming ones.” Kraiński went on to scorn types of objects found in Catholic churches: “As for the images, those do not belong among the ornaments of a church, nor of God’s glory . . . for God Lord forbade to make them, to erect them, and to worship them. . . . It is demonstrated more clearly than the sun that making and erecting images in a church is not an ornament but an abomination and filth. For the Holy Spirit calls making images in a church an abomination and filth, and removing them from churches orderly and consecrated [ochędostwem y powięceniem].” Even the cross or a crucifi x did not belong among the “ornaments of a church,” “for the first Christians did not make crosses at the beginning, nor did they worship one with Lord Christ on it.” Everything else was redundant, vestments, chasubles, albs, antependia, along with Catholic rituals, were considered idolatrous. So, too, Kraiński termed “idolatrous” Catholics’ use of holy water and stoups (basins with water at the entrances of the churches), negating baptism by repeating it. The first Christians certainly did not use them, Kraiński said. Perhaps following Luther’s and Calvin’s views of ritual indifference was Kraiński’s view that chalices used during Mass could be made of any material, since the first Christians used mere wooden cups. Most radically, Kraiński challenged the very ritual that made a church a sacred space fit for the eucharistic ritual—the consecration. Churches did not need to be consecrated, for it was not the building that made the church. “We hear,” he wrote, “that they consecrated churches among the papists. But this consecration by bishops is nothing but superstition, idolatry, witchcraft, mockery, paganism, and judaizing. For is it not superstitious to lock up the church and then knock thrice before the deacon opens it?” Referring to the cult of saints and rituals during Lent, he said, “Is it not idolatry to ask voiceless bones and ashes without feeling for help? Is it not witchcraft to paint crosses of ash and sprinkle with muddy waters? Is it not a mockery to expel devils from a church, as if they had lived in them before? . . . Is it not paganism to build churches to dead people?” Kraiński compared churches devoted to saints, or “dead people,” to pagan temples devoted to “Jupiter, Minerva, . . . and Juno, whom Plato called defenders of cities. Or Neptune, [defender] of the seas, Janus [defender] of the mountains. . . .” He said that Polish Catholics had not changed much from “Polish Pagans [of the past] . . . who


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had built temples, erected images, and observed festivals devoted to various gods.” And, he added, “Is it not judaizing to smear the church with oil?” Polish Protestants’ efforts to separate themselves from “the idolatrous papist” spaces extended to burial grounds. Fighting “the idolatrous understanding” that burial grounds around churches were more sacred than other spaces, they sought to “eliminate” burials in cemeteries near churches by providing separate fenced-off areas. This battle over space was, more broadly, a battle by the Protestants to wrest the term ecclesia Dei (the Church of God) from the Church of Rome and to appropriate it for their own churches.

2 Stealing Sacred Objects

Both Jews and Christians recognized degrees of sacredness of objects and spaces. Much as in synagogues, where the Torah scroll was considered most sacred and other objects assumed a level of sacredness relative to the Torah scroll and their own use in liturgy, degrees of sacredness also existed within Catholic churches, where nonliturgical objects were not as holy as those used during liturgy. The medieval Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas distinguished “various degrees of holiness” in “the sin of sacrilege,” that is, “the irreverent treatment of a sacred thing.” The “species of sacrilege,” he wrote, must be “distinguished according to different aspects of sanctity”; “the greater the holiness ascribed to a sacred thing, the more grievous the sacrilege.” For Aquinas, “the highest place” belonged to the sacraments, “the chief of which is the sacrament of the Eucharist, for it contains Christ Himself.” Therefore, “the sacrilege that is committed against this sacrament is the gravest of all.” He outlined a hierarchy of the sacred and the sacrilege: “The second place, after the sacraments, belongs to the vessels consecrated for the administration of the sacraments; also sacred images and the relics of the saints, wherein the very persons of the saints, so to speak, are reverenced and honored”; then

s t e a l i ng s acr e d obje c ts

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“come things connected with the apparel of the Church and its ministers, and those things whether movable or immovable, that are deputed to the upkeep of the ministers. And whoever sins against anyone of the aforesaid incurs the crime of sacrilege.” In Aquinas’s classification, a chalice or a monstrance used in religious ser vices or “consecrated for the administration of the sacraments” was more sacred, say, than an antependium or a candelabrum, or even a chalice stored in a sacristy. What concerned Aquinas was the effectiveness of punishment given to those who committed “the sin of sacrilege.” The ecclesiastical punishment of excommunication mattered little, since “the sacrilegious man, who reverences not sacred things, is not sufficiently deterred from sinning by sacred things being withheld from him, for he has no concern for them.” But when “the sin of sacrilege” became “the crime of sacrilege,” and was judged by secular courts under “human law,” the transition made effectiveness of punishment possible. So that “men may be deterred from sacrilege,” the state could now sentence sinners turned criminals to death, thus circumventing the Catholic Church’s injunction that “the Church does not inflict death of the body.” The perceived effectiveness of secular courts was further enhanced by the public spectacles of execution, which were seen at the time as deterrents to future crime. Religious and polemical literature—in an essentially nonliterate society—had limited outreach and effectiveness in educating the public, but trials and public executions (for sacrilege, burning at the stake) were witnessed by many, and the news spread by word of mouth to many more. Punishment, so ceremonial in its ritual, sent a clear message of encoded meaning to the larger public. In Poland, only minor crimes were not punished by death, and not all death penalties were equal: hanging, for example, was designed for thieves; decapitation, considered more dignified, for nobles; quartering for violent robbers and murderers; and burning for sacrilege and witchcraft. As a consequence, deciding what was sacred and what was not in classifying crimes as sacrilege or another crime, court justice in early modern Poland was crucial in defining religious boundaries.

Measuring the Sacred and the Sacrilege The courts’ role as arbiters between things sacred and things profane became most evident in robberies and thefts. Crimes against property had the

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potential of sacrilege if committed in spaces classified as sacred. Despite the Reformation’s challenge, Polish courts persistently classified robberies of Catholic churches alone as sacrilegium, affirming the unique sacredness of Catholic spaces and, hence, of the Catholic religion. Robberies from synagogues, or from Eastern Orthodox or Protestant churches, by contrast, were considered by the courts to be common crimes against property. By their decisions about whose property was sacred, the courts wielded tremendous power in shaping public understanding of the legitimacy of competing religious beliefs. The courts weighed in, if somewhat arbitrarily, to determine the degree of sacredness of church spaces and also the sanctity of objects stolen from them, thereby also determining the charge. So, for example, certain textiles that had no direct liturgical purpose were not considered sacred, but pyxes, chalices, monstrances, and reliquaries were. In Cracow, three thieves who had stolen liturgical objects from a church were burned at the stake for sacrilege. In Poznań, a man was tried for numerous church robberies in which he stole— directly from the altars—ritual silver, chalices, crosses, and other liturgical objects, selling his loot to “a young Jew.” He, too, was burned at the stake for sacrilege. The tendency of the court was to charge, try, and execute a criminal for sacrilege if he or she robbed Catholic sacred spaces of anything other than nonliturgical textiles. The courts’ understanding of the differing degrees of sacredness within a church agreed with Aquinas’s outline—with the eucharistic wafer most sacred of all— and could affect the outcome of trials. In 1559, for example, a man named Stanisław entered the Church of St. Nicolas in Cracow: “It was not locked,” he told the court. He squeezed through the bars of the screen that separated the area open to the laity from that restricted to the clergy, broke into the tabernaculum (a receptacle in which a ciborium, or pyx, with a host is stored), and stole “the pyx [a small silver tin] with the sacrament and a chrismatory [a vessel containing the consecrated oil] with another tin box.” Having left the church, he sat on the bank of the Vistula River, “opened the pyx,” “found a gilded silver skull inside,” and hid it, then he “opened a small bag and took out the sacrament with pincers [sczypcamy], put them in his mouth, and ate, tossing the bag into the river.” Stanisław broke the chrismatory into pieces, which he hid. Soon after, he took the pyx into town, where, having “run into a Jew, for twenty groszy, he sold the Jew the tin in which the sacrament had been, together with the skull and a knob


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from the chrismatory, and the cross, for six groszy, to a housewife.” At the interrogation before the court in Cracow, Stanisław also confessed to robbing some noblemen and “a synagogue of the Jews in Lublin, from which he stole two silver knobs and a silk curtain,” and to stealing a charity box from a synagogue in Wiślicz. For his crimes, and especially for mishandling the “most holy sacrament,” Stanisław was burned at the stake, “according to the divine judgment.” In contrast, in 1574 in Poznań, Helias Parzygelny stole some antependia and tablecloths from a number of churches and sold them to Jewish men and women. He usually first disassembled them; with one antependium, for example, he separated a velvet layer from its black linen underlayer and sold the velvet to a Jewish woman, reserving the linen to line his own jacket and make a bag for himself. He was hanged as a common thief. In another case in Poznań some twenty years later, a Christian man was charged with the robbery of a church. He claimed at his interrogation that he accidentally had been locked in the church and hence had done no wrong; he was just “looking at the paintings.” In the end, he did confess to stealing several tablecloths from the altar and some other textiles. He was flogged and expelled from the city. A year later, a Christian woman, Regina, stole three pieces of damask (from the Church of St. Wojciech), a tablecloth (from a church on Poznań’s Ostrów Tumski Island, a seat of the archbishopric and a home to two churches), and some black cloth from Poznań’s Jesuit church. She, too, was flogged and expelled. But, in 1627, the court in Kazimierz, a suburb of Cracow, was in a quandary. A woman named Anna, who had been stealing “for eight years” from laypeople, including Jews, and also from churches, had been caught by residents of the village of Płaszów near Cracow. “It was a double case, ecclesiastical and secular” and had to be dealt with accordingly. At her interrogation, Anna confessed to “secular” thefts and to stealing “only” tablecloths from churches, selling most of them to “a Jew, the printer,” perhaps none other than Aaron ben Isaac, the son of a famous Cracow printer, Isaac of Proshnitz. Under torture, no doubt hoping for better treatment, she explained that she was pregnant. But this was not her first trial for stealing. Sometime before, after she had stolen a tablecloth from a church in the nearby town of Nowe Miasto, her ears were cut off as punishment. At this new trial, as a repeat offender, she was sentenced to death by burning for “stealing church and secular things . . . in violation of a divine commandment and common law.”

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While most thefts and robberies led to the penalty of death regardless of the space, the courts were eager to classify crimes and assess punishments appropriately. Even in cases of common thieves, court officials frequently inquired if the accused also had stolen from a church. A seventeenth-century thief, who was tried in Lublin and who had confessed to petty thefts, denied almost boastfully in answer to the court’s query as to whether “he had robbed churches” that “in our guild, [we] don’t rob churches, [we] only cut off money pouches.” The location of the crime appears to have influenced the assessment of the sacredness of stolen objects, and thereby the sentencing. Bartholomeus Brześć was accused in Lublin of stealing liturgical objects from a parish house—not from the church itself—in the village of Markuszowice, and of selling the objects to Jews. The space from which the objects were stolen appears to have helped reduce the original sentence of burning at the stake to decapitation and a postmortem burning. Space seems to have played a similar role in another trial in Lublin two years later, that of Sebastian Zublowski, who was accused of a number of thefts—including a monstrance, two chalices, and two silver patens—from a church in Konopnica, a town between Cracow and Lublin. Zublowski insisted that he had stolen them not from the church but from the parish house. In his interrogation, he explained that he had been looking for money, but found none and decided to take the ritual objects (he also admitted to stealing clothes from several people). The court agreed that there was a difference between a church and a parish house and, given Zublowski’s other “non-sacrilegious thefts,” treated his crime as theft, not sacrilege, and sentenced him to death, but not by burning. Space within a church also defined and modified the crime, as in the case of Andreas Rytwiński, tried in Lublin in 1642 for “a most atrocious crime of sacrilege,” committed in “a sacrosanct place” to the “dishonor of God.” He had robbed the parish church in Lublin. Rytwiński confessed: “I stole things yesterday when the church was locked at noon. I stole into the church during the high mass [and hid in the] pews, and took silver from three altars, that is, from the Grand Altar, from the chapel of St. Barbara, and from a third altar.” The court inquired in detail how he had reached the altars, how he had known about the silver “since the altars are covered,” whether anyone had instructed him to steal, and if he had committed other crimes. He denied everything except the theft itself. No one had persuaded him to commit “this sacrilege”;


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in fact, he “did not know what drove him to steal from the church.” He insisted repeatedly that he had never stolen anything before. But because he had confessed earlier, during and after torture, the court sentenced him to be burned alive. It was the crime of stealing “from a sacrosanct place,” that was considered “the most atrocious sacrilege,” and had sent him to the stake rather than another form of execution. In the court in Lublin, the singularity of the crime and the actual space from which Rytwiński had stolen the silver determined the severity of punishment. The robbers seemed to be just as aware as the court that objects and spaces had degrees of “holiness.” Or perhaps, at least, they were aware of the court’s objectives behind its questioning and the potential consequences of their answers. One thief who broke into a church in Poznań denied under interrogation he had taken the hosts. He was burned at the stake nevertheless. Examples from Cracow of thieves’ awareness of the court’s acceptance of degrees of sacredness and sacrilege are even more explicit: In 1671, Gregorius Janicki was arrested “concerning certain things stolen by him from the church in the village Dąbrowa.” Janicki confessed that he had intended to steal the pyx from the altar: “[I] had broken the tabernaculum and having cut a piece from the tablecloth on the altar, I took out the pyx with the most holy sacrament through this tablecloth and I spilled the hosts out of the tabernaculum and I walked with [the pyx] toward the door.” His effort not to touch the pyx with the wafers inside demonstrates an understanding of, and reverence for, its sanctity, even as he coveted this ritual object and violated the sanctuary. Twenty years later, Lucas Babski and two brothers, Andreas and Paulus Olszowski, were accused of sacrilege in the Church of St. Stephen in Cracow. At his interrogation, Babski told the court of robbing the church, but underscored his reverence for the holy objects used during the Mass. Like many church robbers, Babski had hidden himself in the choir area after a Sunday mass and waited for the church to be locked, whereupon, he went directly to the altar. With a key, he opened the tabernaculum (tabernacle) and removed the pyx “in which there were hosts, which I did not touch and I only took the lid off the pyx not with my bare hand but through a tablecloth with which the altar was covered.” He noticed that the sacristy was open, went inside, took four patens from the chalices they covered, and hid again in the choir. When the church was reopened, he left and went to visit the Olszowski brothers, who apparently became frightened when Babski showed them the bounty. The

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brothers were tried as accomplices and sentenced to flogging. Babski was sentenced to death, to be decapitated first and then burned at the stake. Thieves were very much aware of the difference between Catholic ritual objects and secular items, even if taken from a church. When Ryczko Senczyk stood accused of a number of robberies, especially some carried out during a plague, he admitted that he and his companions had broken into a nearby church. But they did so, he said, not to steal sacred liturgical objects, but because they had heard that the burghers of that town had taken all their own precious possessions and stored them there. When the court asked for a clarification of “what they had taken from this church,” Senczyk responded, “City clothes, silver, money, they did not take any church objects, only secular [miejskie].” He added later that they also had robbed “Lutheran and Hungarian churches” (both would be understood as Protestant). Senczyk and his companions pleaded to die “in holy Catholic faith.” The court agreed that their crimes were secular, not religious. The objects stolen were not liturgical and did not belong to clergy, even if stolen from a church, and the robberies from Lutheran and Hungarian churches were from non-Catholic religious spaces. Senczyk and his companions were sentenced to death, not by burning but by live quartering, considered appropriate for robbers; later, their sentence was reduced to decapitation and subsequent quartering.

“Not Simply Sacrilege”— Catholic Objects in Calvinist Hands In weighing the degree of sacrilege, courts’ anxieties about the violation of the sacred were heightened when non-Catholics stole from Catholic churches. In such cases, the courts sought to demonstrate the primacy of Catholicism over other religions, whether through the rhetoric the court employed or by the severity of its sentencing of the accused. In August 1680, Constantia, a woman from Gdańsk, a port city on the Baltic Sea, was charged with “sacrilege and profaning Divine Majesty” by the magistrate in Bochnia, a town near Cracow that eighty years earlier had been the site of a host desecration trial leading to the expulsion of Jews. Constantia was, in her words, “of Calvinist faith,” and had lived “modestly,” making a living “from work, not from theft.” After coming to the village of Wojnicz (near Bochnia) earlier that year, Constantia had met a foot soldier, who apparently expressed an


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interest in marrying her. Both he and Constantia were lodging at an inn run by a woman named Hedwiga. It appears that the prospect of a wedding— and the money that Constantia thought was necessary to pay for it—inspired her to steal. One day, she went to nearby Bochnia, “entered the Dominican church, and seeing that no one was there, only a priest talking to a woman,” she stole a silver tablet from a crucifi x in a chapel, and sold it to “Jew Maior, who holds a lease of the manor in Wojnicz, in which a Jewess sells alcohol in the main room.” She also stole some tablecloths, which she sold to the Jewess. On her return to Bochnia, she “entered the parish church,” “after vespers,” when it was nearly empty except for two priests preparing to lock up. When they left, Constantia “went over to the main altar” and, seeing that “the door [to the tabernaculum] was not locked,” she climbed up the altar and removed a ciborium, a pyx, and a spoon. She wrapped the objects in a white kerchief and left the altar. Only later did she discover “something white in the pyx [w puszcze]” and placed it on the white kerchief, realizing that this must be “what she had heard from people that Catholics took after confession.” Why had she not left the hosts on the altar? “She did not look inside,” she said, but when she did, she removed the hosts from the container. What she did with the hosts remains unclear. The court asked anxiously why she had “soiled [sordes fecit] the spot where she removed the Most Venerable [Sacrament].” From later testimonies, it emerged that Constantia may have thrown the hosts to the ground, soiling them, perhaps even with her own bodily fluids. When asked under torture why she “had committed the filth,” she responded that she “was drunk and did not feel it,” and since she had been locked in the church overnight, she may well have urinated there. Awakened by church bells in the morning, Constantia left as soon as the church was reopened, returned to Wojnicz, and without disclosing that the objects had been stolen from a church, gave her loot to Hedwiga to hide in hay. Sometime later, the two women cut the silver with an ax into smaller, more salable bits, which Constantia carried to the Jew in the manor. Perhaps in a delaying tactic, the Jew told her to wait to weigh the silver. Meanwhile, he sent someone to notify the lord of the manor, who immediately ordered that Constantia be brought to him. The lord told the Jew to release Constantia, paying her nothing. At home, she gave some other pieces of silver, including a small cross, to her soldier, who became suspicious. To Hedwiga, at least, Constantia did not deny that

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she had stolen the tablecloths stained with wax from the church. Hedwiga answered, “It does not matter where you have it from, even if it is from an altar,” although in court, Hedwiga offered a different version of events. In her version, when Hedwiga saw what was inside the kerchief hidden in the hay—“something white and yellow,” perhaps the hosts— she “ran to the Jew and asked him for advice about what to do with it.” When Maior, the Jew, saw the contents of the kerchief, he apparently said to Hedwiga, “I am not familiar with your stuff, but I will go to the lord and inform him,” whereupon, the lord of the manor sent two men to warn Hedwiga about her relationship with Constantia. At the manor, a Catholic priest recognized the silver as stolen from a church, and the women were then implicated in “sacrilege.”  The presumption of Hedwiga’s guilt rested on Constantia’s allegations that Hedwiga had taught her “love sorcery.” The crime verged on host desecration, since the court implied that Constantia may have stolen this “Venerable Sacrament” for use “in sorcery” or “to sell to Jews,” but the court did not press the matter. Constantia’s case seems a typical case of larceny from a church, except for the fact that she was an acknowledged Calvinist. While the court used her faith against her, charging offense against the Catholic religion and breaking “God’s commandment” that “even gentiles [pagans] observe,” her defense guardian, Albert Fortynowicz, tried to use it, along with her gender, in her favor. But since Constantia had pled guilty as charged, the defense could do little but work to reduce the sentence. Fortynowicz presented five points in her behalf: First, Constantia was a woman, “and according to the law their sin is lesser” on account of imbecilitas sexus (the feebleness of her sex), a natural feebleness shared by all women, hence her punishment should be less severe. Second, Constantia did not steal for her own pleasure and excess, but out of necessity, “wanting to enter the married state” and live honestly. Third, since she was “not a Christian,” she “sinned less,” for she did not know the true God and how to honor the sacraments. Fourth, she was drunk and, Fortynowicz pled, even according to the law, drunkenness was a legitimate excuse that lessened a crime. Finally, Constantia had committed the crime only once and, most important, she now promised to accept “our Roman Catholic Faith,” to perform appropriate penance, and to amend her life. Fortynowicz implored the court to “let her live” and “let the Almighty Most Holy God be the judge.” 


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The court refused to accept the pleas and sentenced Constantia to death by burning alive at the stake, “lest such public crimes be left unpunished,” but then, because she had converted from Calvinism to Catholicism, her sentence was reduced to beheading followed by the stake. Hedwiga’s fate was no better; despite her denials, with and without torture, the court assumed her guilt in inspiring Constantia’s crime and conspiring with her and the Jew to hide it. Hedwiga also was beheaded and her body joined Constantia’s in a “burnt sacrifice” for crimes “against Divine Majesty.”

Robberies of Synagogues and Non-Catholic Churches Court records provide few cases of thefts from Protestant churches, mentioned mostly in passing with references to other crimes or to looting during outbreaks of religious violence. References to Eastern Orthodox churches and synagogues appear more frequently, but still less frequently than thefts from Catholic churches, at least in the western, Catholic-dominated territories of the kingdom. This discrepancy may have been a consequence of the disproportionately larger number of Catholic churches than Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, or Jewish places of worship. It also may have been a result of different levels of access to, and knowledge of, the space and what might be found there. For example, Christians would have had limited access to synagogues, unless hired as helpers by the Jewish community on Sabbath and holidays. With Protestant churches, there might have been yet another reason—their lack of interior ornamentation, known to visitors and to others via word of mouth, as well as by polemical Catholic sermons that often contrasted the wealth and splendor of Catholic churches with the simplicity and bareness of Protestant churches. While theft of sacred objects from Catholic churches by non-Catholics added to the seriousness of the crime of sacrilege, the courts did not consider theft of objects from non-Catholic spaces that were used for religious purposes to be sacrilegium because the spaces themselves were not deemed sacred. Violations of such spaces—Protestant churches, Eastern Orthodox churches, and synagogues—were held to be common thefts and robberies. In 1577, a man named Fedoszej, tried in the court of Sanok for multiple robberies of Eastern Orthodox churches, was hanged like a common thief. Almost a century later in Lublin, a Christian, Jan Malczewski, was beheaded for stealing money, priestly garments, and other precious items, including a

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silver cross, from a church of Eastern Orthodox rite. In the recorded discussion of what he did with the church objects, no references to “sacrilege” or “sacrilegious” appear. Other cases, from Przemyśl, Wiśnicz, and Sanok, seem to confirm this pattern of the courts’ exclusion of non-Catholic Christian spaces from the realm of sacred spaces, and their punishment of the accused as ordinary thieves. In 1593, the castle court in Sanok, in southeastern Poland, tried Paweł Swostak of Sobolów for breaking into the synagogue in a small town of Rymanów in southern Poland. Although no verdict has been preserved, the crime was not considered sacrilegious, and the short court notice recorded only that “having forgotten the fear of God, he broke into the Jewish synagogue in Rymanów, and thus broke there the Ten Commandments. He took movable things, that is: a silver cup, a silver tablet, three towels, and a silver hand, which he sold to a Jewish woman in Sanok.” For this court, Swostak’s theft of “moveable property” was a violation of one of “God’s commandments,” but not a sacrilege. Among cases tried in Sanok, only one was classified as sacrilege: a raid in 1605 on a Catholic church, during which a priest was murdered. Several decades later, Jacob Andzlik and Samuel Maykowic, leaders of the Jewish community in Wiśnicz, brought a case against a Christian man, Jacob Bałdo, accusing him of robbing the local synagogue. The court record betrays a choreographed linguistic and legal dance around the definitions of degrees of holiness and sacred boundaries. The court’s preamble noted that this case was about theft, not sacrilege, and the Jews’ statement, as recorded in court proceedings, said that the crime was against “God’s commandment,” but was not sacrilegious. Indeed, the Jews’ statement, perhaps redacted by the court officials or altered in tone and rhetoric—not an uncommon practice in courts that did not record verbatim depositions— emphasized that “human possessions” had been stolen, not sacred objects, implying that the only “God’s commandment” broken was that against stealing. They attached a list of stolen property: ornamental cloths, including covers for the Torah scroll, silver, wax, and money. Although Jacob Bałdo admitted to robbing the synagogue—it had taken him three hours, he said— and many other places as well, the court did not sentence him to death, but ruled, in highly charged religious rhetoric, that he was to be led outside the city to a pillory and flogged, his ears were to be cut off, and he was to be banished from the city forever. All this, the court


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record states, was done so that “the perfidious and hated nation of Jews may not rejoice from the ruin of Christians, to whom they are perpetual enemies.” The court’s verdict should not be dismissed as simply siding with Christians against Jews, since a few months later, the court that had handled the Bałdo case heard another brought by a Jew, Isaac Andzlik, “an infidel citizen of Wiśnicz,” against “wicked thieves” [maleficos fures], Christians Albert Gargulia and Stanisław Kaczmarczyk, for robbing his house on Friday night, after digging a hole and entering a space where spices and other merchandise were stored. The court, in that case, sentenced Gargulia and Kaczmarczyk to death; Gargulia, as the instigator, was sentenced to hanging and Kaczmarczyk to decapitation, “so that such crimes and evil deeds may not spread.” But after Gargulia retracted accusations against Kaczmarczyk and implored the court not to execute his companion, the court commuted Gargulia’s death sentence from hanging to decapitation and spared Kaczmarczyk’s life, sentencing him to flogging, amputation of ears, and expulsion from town, just as it had Jacob Bałdo. Gargulia’s punishment was more severe than Bałdo’s; it seems that the court was aware of the meaning of objects stolen from the synagogue and wanted to make a statement depreciating the sacredness of the stolen objects and the space where they had been held. Both cases of thefts, from synagogues in Sanok and Wiśnicz, further underscore the courts’ self-conscious treatment of thefts from non-Catholic “sacred places” as crimes against property and their awareness of the religious issues involved.

Christian Sacred Objects in Jewish Hands Many trials of thefts and robberies highlight a close relationship between Jews and Christians; Jewish men and women appear frequently in trial records as fences to whom stolen goods were brought in exchange for cash, food, or drink. Court descriptions of scenes in which ceremonial objects changed hands point to a tangible mutual anxiety of crossing religious and legal boundaries. Jews who were involved in buying and selling objects stolen from churches and synagogues displayed a range of responses, from indifference to self-consciousness and from unease to aggressive pursuit of the thief. In 1627, Jan Chrzanowski was arrested in Lublin for stealing an antependium from the local Jesuit church. He had stolen antependia from other

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churches, as well, selling some to the executioner’s wife and some “to a Jew from Lublin, named Illa, who lives near Moszko’s and who sells beer from Volhyn and Mazovia.”  When Illa asked Chrzanowski if the antependia had come from a church and he responded in the affirmative, Illa was not greatly distressed and readily bought them. The executioner’s wife also was said to have known that the objects had been stolen from a church. “She knew,” Chrzanowski said, “and said to me afterward, ‘Jaśku, don’t you have fear [of God], these are church things.’ ”  The executioner’s wife denied this, and Chrzanowski was burned at the stake just outside the city. The relationship between Christian thieves and Jewish fences and unease about handling of objects stolen from Catholic churches come to the fore in 1667, in a spectacular case from Cracow. Andreas Romanowski was tried for robbing a number of churches, most notably the Dominican church in Cracow. Romanowski had a colorful past; he came from a village owned by an influential magnate family, worked as a farmer, a soldier, and later at a Franciscan monastery in the town of Nowy Sącz, but he insisted that “did not steal anything [from the Franciscans].”  During one summer, he had worked as a guardian of tithed grains in Warsaw for the clerics in the Church of St. John, and then as a beer maker in Jarosław, an important fair town between Cracow and Przemyśl. He had roamed around Poland, supporting himself by working as a servant and stealing from burghers, Jews, and priests, and “specializing” in churches. He robbed several churches in Kazimierz and Cracow, including the Churches of Holy Trinity and St. Catherine in Kazimierz, and sold the loot to Jews. From the Church of St. Catherine, for example, he stole antependia, money, silver plates, and other liturgical objects, and after hiding them for three days, began to sell his stolen goods. “I went to Jews,” he confessed, “and I entered the shop of this Jew, whose name I don’t know, but who has a shop near the old synagogue, when you enter through the gate, on the right hand side.”  Romanowski offered “pearls and jewels, and silver candlesticks,” and after some bargaining, the Jew gave him fi fteen złotys and urged him to bring whatever goods he had. He returned to the Jew on several occasions, offering him his sacred loot. Before he was tortured, Romanowski also told of looting a burning church of the Dominican friars in Cracow: “During the fire when the altar in the church of the Dominican Friars burned, when they rang the bells, I was staying overnight in the house of the vodka distiller near the Mikołajska gate and


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when I heard it, I immediately ran there and burst into the church just as the Dominican fathers were rescuing the church silver from the fire. I took four candlesticks, two small and two big ones, four patens . . . buried them by the city wall and on the third day I approached the Jew.”  When the executioner prepared the ropes for strappado (fig. 1), and asked whether Romanowski “had set fire under the altar in the Dominican church,” the story began to change— dramatically. On Friday, August 15, 1667, Romanowski was walking on Grodzka Street, a principal thruway in Cracow connecting the royal castle with the main market square, when, on a nearby street, he encountered “the Jew to whom I had been selling silver, who then asked if I had anything to sell but I said I did not.” Romanowski said that the Jew replied: “ ‘There will be a church fair [odpust] at the Dominicans’. They will dress the altar beautifully, there will be a lot of silver, so you can now get something good, and so if you then set fire, they will run to [put out] the fire, and you could then take the silver and bring it to me.’ . . . He gave me a sack.”  Two days later, Romanowski crept into the church, waited in the pews until well into the night, and then went toward the altar: “I lit the candle and packed as much silver as I could into the sack, and put it near the main door in a corner. . . . I returned to the altar and, in the back, set it on fire.”  Why, the court probed, had he not left through the window, as seemed to have been his habit in previous church robberies? He could not, Romanowski explained, have hauled “this sack with silver” through the window. When the friars ran into the church to put the fire down, they noticed the sack by the door. Still, Romanowski had managed to get the four candlesticks and patens, leaving the rest behind. When he appeared with his loot at the Jewish man’s house, the Jew was apparently disappointed but, according to Romanowski, he paid for the silver and gave him five extra złotys for “setting the fire.” When the torture began, Romanowski confirmed everything he had already said. Still, the court wanted to know “if what he had said above might have been said out of fear or hatred for the Jews.” Romanowski simply repeated that he had “set the fire and stolen from the churches at the Jew’s instigation.” He implicated Christians as well, but a few days later, he denied the involvement of at least one of the Christian men: “I told on him wanting to take revenge because I had quarreled with him once when we played cards.” He continued to accuse the Jew, who by then had been arrested and thrown into prison.

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Just before Romanowski was led to the stake, he offered new revelations that the soldier, with his apprentice, both of whom had been “sitting with him in the tower,” had tried to persuade him “not to tell on the Jew.” The soldier had “left the tower and spoken to Jews in German”; upon his return, he tried to persuade Romanowski not to denounce the Jew. Several clerics, after warning the soldier not to talk to the Jew, arranged for the Jew to be moved from the tower to the much worse underground prison. But the soldier and his apprentice had continued to persuade Romanowski “for two weeks . . . until today,” with the apprentice persisting to the very last moment, “what will you gain from it?” After interrogation under torture, the soldier’s apprentice had come to Romanowski and apparently convinced him to “take back [the accusation against] the Jew.” Headed to the place of execution, Romanowski reverted to his original accusation: “And I go with this to death and to Lord’s judgment, wanting to save my soul. . . . I would not have thought about setting the altar on fire if the Jew had not swayed me and I sold all the things stolen from the churches to him.” It is uncertain what actually happened, whether the Jew was unjustly accused, whether he was implicated because of his role as a fence, or whether he had suggested the course of action that brought Romanowski to the stake. Whatever the truth of the matter was, this case underlines the frequency of contact that some Jews had with Catholic liturgical objects, and the dangers such relationships posed to Jews. Textiles were much easier to steal and hide than other objects. In Poznań, a Christian woman, Jadwiga Schobolarzewna, with another young woman, Dorotha, preferred to steal textiles because they easily could be disassembled and sold in unrecognizable pieces. After stealing an antependium from one church, Schobolarzewna went to another church, stole “a red damask antependium,” carried it outside the city to behind the remote Church of Corpus Christi, and took it apart. “First she removed the linen underlining, and left it there, the damask she divided into three parts, and took one to a Jewish woman, whom she does not know, for nine groszy, and the second part she took to Maruszcza . . . who lives in Waliszewo.” On another day, Schobolarzewna went to the Jesuit church in Poznań and “took a painting of Jesus in a satin dress from in front of the painting of St. Anne,” adorned with precious stones and pearls, mother of pearl, and copper and bronze chains. Though the painting was difficult to conceal, she took it “to Brona, an old Jewess who sits at the market stand,” and she brought the mother of pearl to a Christian woman. Efforts to conceal the origin of such loot sometimes


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failed. In Lublin, two Jewish men, trying to sell an antependium made of three swaths of fabric, were arguing that it was actually, “a satin apron with three flaps [na trzy poły],” when “Miss Kachna came out of her stall and said, ‘Jews, these are church things, an apron is not that wide,’ ” to which the Jew responded, “You cannot prove that these are church things.” When other women joined in, insisting that it was not an apron but an antependium, a shouting match erupted. The disturbance, not the handling of stolen church property, landed them all in court. More difficult to disguise after theft were crucifi xes and other silver objects; although some buyers—like Brona, to whom Schobolarzewna sold the precious painting, or Lewek, a Jew in the town of Pinczów who bought a silver cross— seem not to have hesitated, Christian thieves, and fences, Jewish or other, often tried to break such objects into smaller pieces. A thief did not always have to undertake the concealing; a fence could buy the obviously stolen items and transform them himself. In 1670, Franciszek Smolkowicz brought to a Jew in Cracow a pyx he had stolen from a church—he had eaten all the hosts from it— as well as “a green curtain from the painting of the Mother of Sorrow, a green silk apron with a Passion scene, also a silver tablet with a Passion scene,” and smaller objects. According to Smolkowicz, the Jew “asked me where I had gotten all these things and I told him from a church. He asked if I could sell [the silver] to him, saying, ‘Sell it if you want and I will smelt it, and I will not sell it to Catholics.’ ” Smolkowicz subsequently broke into other churches, sold some of the loot to a Jewish woman, Łubka, who lived on Długa Street (Long Street) in Kazimierz, and some to a Jew named Moyzes, telling him “they were things I had stolen from a church.” Like the first Jew, Moyzes paid him “three złotys for the chains and seven złotys for the lid from a pyx with an engraved cross,” and told Smolkowicz, “I will not show it to anyone but will smelt it and so if you have any more bring it to me and I will pay you.” After interrogation under torture, Smolkowicz was executed at the stake. The comments attributed to the two Jews, who reportedly had promised to smelt the silver objects and tell no one, show a self-consciousness about transgressing religious precepts and the law. The issue at stake was not that the objects had been stolen, but that they had been stolen from a church. The Jews’ comments might simply indicate fear of consequences if the stolen church objects were to be found in their hands, but they also correspond to restrictions in Jewish law on the handling of objects used for “idol worship.” Rabbis distinguished whether objects were sold or

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given as a pledge to a Jewish or non-Jewish smelter; if an object was sold to a Jewish smelter, its sacred status was seen as effectively nullified and a Jew would therefore be permitted to profit from it. Halakhic considerations aside, Jews knew that dealing in stolen church objects was dangerous since general royal privileges granted to Jews in the Middle Ages had prohibited them from buying and selling church objects. The earliest-known privilege for Jews in Poland, issued by Prince Bolesław the Pious of Kalisz in 1264, included a clause: “A Jew is allowed to receive as pledges all things which may be pawned with him—no matter what they are called—without making any investigation about them, except bloody and wet clothes and sacred vessels, which he shall under no circumstances accept.” Jewish community leaders also warned against accepting stolen goods. In 1670, the Council of Lithuania prohibited Jews from buying stolen things from non-Jews, especially objects that appeared to have been stolen from a church. Six years later, the council was even more explicit; in dealing with the question of communal expenses resulting from anti-Jewish libels, the council ruled that expenses related to intervention on behalf of accused Jews would be covered only in instances of accusations of host desecration or of ritual murder, a charge that Jews killed Christian children, but not of “theft of the impure vessels (kelei teumah),” by which they meant Catholic liturgical objects. The council understood that a charge of sacrilege related to dealing in stolen church objects could endanger the entire Jewish community. More frequently, Jews simply were forced to return such pawned objects. In 1661, two Poznań Jews, Aaron Szotek and Jacob Lipman, were compelled to return a gold-plated chalice, a paten, and two silver ampoules to the parish church of Mary Magdalena in Poznań. The items had been deposited with them as pledges for a loan by the “notable Karol Janecz.” The church’s priest sought to retrieve the pledges, insisting that Szotek and Lipman had accepted them in violation of “Sacred canons and Royal Statutes.” The two Jews returned the pledges and were freed. Some Jews, who made their living as fences, occasionally objected to accepting goods stolen from churches, and some took their protests to authorities. In 1671, when Gregorius Janicki was caught and tried in Cracow for stealing from a church in the nearby town of Dąbrowa, he told the court that, when he had shown the loot, including a pyx, to a Jew, the Jew “counted the money and told me not to do this any more because this is a bad thing and I will not buy this from you.” In Poznań, when a man named Albertus broke


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into a church and stole silver, including the pyx “where there was the Holy Sacrament,” and went to a local Jew to sell it, the Jew threatened him with the magistrate. The thief left the Jew’s house and went to a brothel, where he converted the pyx into cash, or sex. He was caught and burned at the stake for sacrilege. Notably, no charge was filed against the Jew, nor did anyone try to take advantage of this case and turn it into an anti-Jewish affair. Similarly in Lublin, Mathias Koszydło, a Catholic from Kraśnik, confessed to the court that he had stolen a cross with relics from Lublin’s Jesuit church, removed the relics from the cross, and tossed them into a pond near the Jewish quarter. Like many other thieves, he then broke the cross into smaller pieces and took them to Jews to sell. But the Jews “let the chief magistrate [woyt] know and . . . I was imprisoned in the chief magistrate’s house.” Koszydło managed to escape because he was not tied up and the place was not secure, whereupon he tried to sell the rest of the silver to other Jews, but again a Jew “scared him away saying ‘I will denounce you.’ ” He was arrested by students from the Jesuit college, and sent to trial. Aware of such potential traps, Christian robbers often lied about their own loot and developed different stories for different buyers, as did Piotr Rozwadowski, who was tried in Lublin in 1663 for robbing the parish church of, among other things, pearls from a chasuble, a stole, and other liturgical vestments. More than three hundred pearls, he said, “were now with the Jews,” some sold to “a Jew whose name I do not know but who lives at Lachman’s on the Jewish street on the mill’s side.” “The Jew is tall,” he added, “the widowed seamstress . . . and her tap-room keeper [szynkarka] know him.” Other pearls he sold to “the Jewess who has a stall on Krakowskie Przedmieście in front of the sword-maker’s on the side of the church of the Holy Spirit.” When the court inquired “whether the persons to whom he had sold the pearls had asked where he got them,” Rozwadowski replied, “I was asked and said [to the Christian woman] I had found them near the church pews, and to the Jew I said I had found them on the street, and to the Jewish woman, I said I had found them in the cemetery.” His crafty answers suggest that he was aware of trouble if the Jews were to learn that the pearls had been cut from liturgical vestments. Rozwadowski was right; he was handed over to the local priest by a Jew to whom he had tried to sell the pearls. By denouncing or even arresting thieves and handing them over to a priest or the magistrate—whether out of respect for law or out of fear for their own lives

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and property—Jews were, in effect, helping to enforce the Catholic laws of sacrilege. They understood the gravity of the crime and its potential consequences if they were implicated in handling these “sacred objects.” The consequences were indeed grave. In spring 1663, Mathias Pawłowski of Tomaszów Lubelski robbed two churches, one in the small town of Stawy and one in the town of Radom, where he dug under the foundation to get into the church. From each church, he stole some silver, including pyxes. The fragmentary court records indicate that the pyx from Stawy had contained consecrated hosts. Pawłowski apparently sold the silver to Pinhas, a Jew from Tomaszów, who was summoned to the Lublin Royal Crown Tribunal. Interrogated under torture, Pinhas denied any knowledge of the hosts, but was sentenced nonetheless to death by burning. Such grave consequences sent a signal across the land, ensuring that everyone, Christians and Jews alike, understood the differences between crime against “secular” property and crime against “the sacred.” The case of Mathias Pawłowski and Pinhas of Tomaszów highlights another area of intersection between crimes against property and crimes against the sacred. As a result of the role of some Jews as fences, thefts from churches overlapped with legends of Jewish host desecration in the minds of some court officials. Thefts of pyxes that may have contained the consecrated wafers and their sale to Jews made the connection between robberies of Catholic churches and charges of host desecration seem all the more plausible to Christians. Pinhas had been burned to death for sacrilege, even though under repeated interrogation about the pyx he had denied any knowledge of the host, considered by Catholics to be the most sacred of objects. In 1628, when Albert Turski, a petty nobleman, the son of a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, was tried in Lublin for robbing a church, the court investigated possible connections he may have had with Jews. As a nobleman, Turski was first summoned before the Crown Tribunal; the tribunal then dispatched him to the city court for further interrogation and sentencing. Although Turski may have been educated by a Catholic tutor—he acknowledged that he had been educated “in the house of his father by a student from Kalisz,” in a city with an important Jesuit college and thus a leading education center for Catholics—he declared in court that he was a Protestant and had never gone to confession. When the court inquired whether he had been encouraged by anyone to rob this church, Turski denied it, saying that he “had wanted to sell [the loot] to Jews in exchange for food.” He told the court he had sold some things earlier to a Jewish woman


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he had visited the day of his arrest with “the servant to His Highness the Royal Marshal,” who himself was selling some tin objects. The Jewish woman had told him that if he ever had any silver, she would buy it from him, and because he was sure to have a buyer, he “stole silver from the church.” The court asked further, “whether he had wanted to sell the Jews the Holy Sacrament.” No, the nobleman responded, “only the silver.” “Did any Jew try to persuade you to commit this act?” No one, he said, except for the Jewish woman to whom he had sold some other things earlier; her question about the silver had tempted him to find some. Under torture, Turski repeated: “I did not steal at Jewish instigation, nor did I want to steal the Holy Sacrament, but I coveted the silver.” This probing by courts reflects the courts’ willingness to connect church robberies with host desecration, especially when Jews were implicated in handling the stolen goods. In this trial, the Protestant nobleman was not granted privilege because of his status; like those of humble status accused and convicted of sacrilege, he also was sentenced to death by burning and, before the stake, both of his hands were to be severed. There was a similarly persistent probing by the court in Cracow at the 1671 trial of Gregorius Janicki from Dąbrowa. Queried about thefts from churches and loot sold to a Jew, Janicki was asked “if he had sold anything [else] to other Jews or if he had, at any point, taken the Most Holy Host and sold it to Jews.” He denied this firmly. Asked again “if Jews had encouraged him and if he had known the Jew before, he denied that [too].” Under torture, Janicki stood firmly on his testimony, denying that Jews had persuaded him to steal. Both cases reflect the courts’ reluctance to give up the conviction that Jews were involved in thefts from churches and, crucially, that they were the source of the thief ’s own intention. There were relatively few instances in which Jews themselves were accused of engaging in robberies from churches; when they occurred, the anxiety over the eucharistic wafer was even more acute. In 1606, Isaac, a Jew from Bohemia, was charged with taking part with a Christian, Caspar Dąbrowski, in a robbery of the St. Francis Church in Cracow, stealing silver vessels in which “the Most Sacred Sacrament of Eucharist” had been stored. The elders of the Cracow Jewish community intervened and provided guarantees, whereupon Isaac was released. This link between sacrilege, host desecration, and church robberies also was on display in the case of four Jews— Jakub Salamonowicz of the town of Pinczów, Nochim of Lublin, Israel of

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Przeworsk, and Yohel of Murawa— accused of robbing a Catholic church in the town of Komaje in the Lithuanian part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The plaintiffs, the priest of the Komayski parish church and the sacristan, charged that Jews, “the sacrilegious thieves,” had known about “the miraculous painting of the Most Holy Virgin . . . , decorated in gold, silver, pearls and other gems,” which the church had recently received, and since it “awoke their appetite for these gems” they broke into the church “in a thievish manner” and: having broken the ciborium with axes, dared to take with their foul hands the sacra sacrorum, a box with forty communion wafers for the Jews in other kahals, offending the Lord’s Sublimity. At the same time they stole two empty chalices, and having stripped the altar of St. John, and the painting of the Most Holy Virgin, of its pearls, golden rings, silver and other splendors that were on this painting, and two silver hanging candelabra, they took them with their sacrilegious hands. And not being satisfied with this, they broke into the sacristy in a thievish way, and stole a large silver monstrance and the parish priest’s money, and many other things, which according to the registry of items, are easily worth twelve thousand złoty.

Thus, the plaintiffs concluded, the Jews “in their adamant malice, stripped the Komayski church, and [thereby] God’s glory, of their silver and splendor.” Soon after the robbery was discovered, the Jews were caught and arrested by two noblemen who delivered them to the nearest town. The court decree states that the Jews in town consequently “organized a tumult, . . . and disregarding the severity of the common law designed against such dissolute people, they retook these Jewish thieves,” and thus the Jews escaped. Only Jakub Salamonowicz remained in custody. Salamonowicz denied that he had actively participated in the robbery and, while in prison, “took an iron candlestick and attempted to hurt himself in his throat and side, almost killing himself.” Both the court and the plaintiffs interpreted Salamonowicz’s suicide attempt as proof that he wanted “to avoid serious punishment, which he deserved because of his crimes.” The plaintiffs urged that he be sent to torture “so that more information can be extracted; but Lord Rawienski, a counselor of this Jew Salamonowicz, protested and stated that his client was not guilty, not even a suspect, because he had not committed any theft and [he said] that the plaintiff had not proven anything, because nothing was


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found with [Salamonowicz].” When the group was intercepted, only Salamonowicz was caught; “the others had fled.” Rawienski argued that this “perhaps means that they were guilty,” but Salamonowicz was “innocent and that’s why he did not flee.” Another nobleman objected to the plaintiffs’ request for torture, saying that further inquiry was unnecessary because “everyone in the Wilkomierski district knows that the Komaje church was robbed by the Jews. And the objects displayed in this court had been found with the accused Jews, in whose company this Jew [Salamonowicz] had found himself.” The nobleman asked that the Jew be punished and “if necessary, the sacristan of the Komaje church should take an oath,” but the court concurred with the plaintiffs and sent Salamonowicz to the torture chamber. At first, he denied he had even been in Komaje; according to the court report, after the first stretch on the rack, he said he had been persuaded to stand on guard “at the cemetery, while the other three broke the ciborium with axes and stole the box with holy Hosts, two goblets and two silver plates from sacristy, a monstrance, two lamps and sold all this silver to the Jew, Moszko Senator, in Wiżuny, and they gave to Moszko the box with hosts, which he said looked like nickels. And [Moszko] then took them out with his lewd hands, and having put them on paper, he gave them to his wife to hide, and they conspired to burn the [hosts].” Salamonowicz’s counselors, Lord Woytkiewicz and Lord Bohdanowicz, tried to save him; Woytkiewicz argued that he had confessed under torture “in terrible pain not knowing what he was saying,” and thus should be asked to take an oath and be freed since he was innocent. The court did not heed this plea. Jakub Salamonowicz was sentenced “to death by burning as a sacrilegious thief.” The court based its decision, it said, on “the common law and holy justice.” The others were sentenced to death in absentia, and declared fugitives. The court’s language describing the crime has undeniable religious undertones. The robbery of the Komaje church was not a crime against property, but a crime against “God’s glory.” The silver represented “God’s splendor.” The image the court and the plaintiffs evoked of “the [Jews’] foul hands” touching “the sacra sacrorum” demonstrates how close church robbery cases were to accusations of host desecration. The accusation that Jews intended to distribute the stolen wafers to other Jewish communities and to destroy some wafers by burning was taken literally from the numerous tales of Jewish host desecrations circulating across Europe at that time and centuries earlier.

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The conflation of host desecration tales and church robberies should not be surprising. Pyxes, ciboria, monstrances, and chalices were likely to be made of precious metals; hence, they would be most likely to attract thieves. In addition, these ritual objects were in direct contact with the “sacra sacrorum,” and sometimes held the sacred wafers. In Aquinas’s degrees of holiness, “the sacrilege that is committed against this sacrament [was] the gravest of all” followed by sacrilege against “the vessels consecrated for the administration of the sacraments.” The step from a charge of robbery to a charge of host desecration was an easy one, whether against Jews or Christians. And when it occurred, it was often with the gravest of consequences.

3 Prosecuting Sins, Defending Faith

In 1721, a Christian man, Woyciech Cierpiątka, stood before the court in the town of Chełm, accused of robbing a Catholic church and stealing liturgical objects— a monstrance and a pyx containing six hosts. After hiding the stolen items in hay for three days, he took them to some Jews in the nearby town of Rejowce, who “immediately delivered him to the magistrate.” Cierpiątka was sentenced to death “for touching shamefully with his hands the consecrated communion wafers, as well as the monstrance and the pyx.” His hands were to be scorched in a public event in front of the city hall; he was then to be decapitated and his body burned near the gallows. Woyciech Cierpiątka’s case, like those of other church robberies, demonstrates the thin line between the power of the church and the power of secular authorities in matters of robberies and accusations of host desecration. The court’s own language describing the crime focused not on the theft of church vessels, considered a secular crime, but on the touching of the consecrated Communion wafers, a religious transgression. The court in Chełm, in effect, was enforcing Catholic practices that forbade the laity to touch the consecrated wafer. Other courts would do the same on behalf of other Catholic beliefs. From the 1560s, after the enactment of the explicit prohibition to execute ecclesiastical verdicts by secular authorities, Polish secular courts were charged

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with dealing with matters that in some regions in Europe—as in Italy, and Spain and its colonies—would have fallen under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The Polish law prohibiting the use of the secular arm in enforcing Church laws and legal decisions had been intended to shield religious dissenters from the authority of the Catholic Church’s courts in the wake of the Reformation, but it effectively turned the religious sins of touching the Communion wafers, receiving Communion without prior confession, and improper uses of the eucharistic wafer, as well as iconoclasm and blasphemy into “crimes.” The law, while intending to restrict the Church’s reach, meant that secular courts enforced Catholic doctrines and took it upon themselves to restore honor to God or other figures considered holy by the Catholic Church. It was an ironic inversion of the law’s original intent.

“Sacrilegious Hand” and the Crime of Choking On July 10, 1643, Martinus Wasnowicz, “citizen and sworn councilman” of Wiśnicz, a town not far from Cracow, filed a criminal charge against Jan Baran, who was from the nearby village of Gierczyce. Wasnowicz charged that Baran, “having forgotten the Omnipotent Lord God . . . , having given away his soul into the devil’s hands, and forlorn his Christian faith like a lost sheep, had wanted to abandon the Omnipotent God,” and committed a terrible “crime” against him. But God, not wanting to let Baran “hide his despicable deed,” revealed his “crime” that “having feigned cough, he had let the Most Sacred Sacrament fall out of his mouth. Worse yet, he had let it fall on his hand.” Baran’s “deed” was said to have been witnessed by Walenty Słęczka, who was “kneeling next to him in the middle of the church.” When Słęczka promptly confronted him, Baran denied any wrongdoing, and an uproar ensued in the church. The matter was promptly brought to the court’s attention, whereupon “a prosecutor against such godless traitors against God” was appointed. Brought to testify before the court, Słęczka claimed that Baran had hidden the host in his kerchief; Baran again denied it, insisting that he had actually put the host back in his mouth. The prosecutor, Martinus Wasnowicz, accepted Słęczka’s accusation, and charged, in his brief to the court, that Baran had gone back home and tossed the “kerchief, which he used [in church] to wipe his mouth” into a stove. Miraculously, the kerchief “did not burn.” For Wasnowicz, the fact that the kerchief was impossible to burn proved Baran’s sacrilegious crime. He postulated that since

prosecu t ing sins, defending fa it h

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Baran, “despite having been born in Christian faith, betrayed his Lord and forsook his own soul . . . he should be punished justly as a traitor against God, according to the law.” The court summoned five witnesses to testify about Jan Baran’s moral character. Gaspar Zamiączki, who appears to have been a jail guardsman, told of rumors, “not sure if true,” that Baran and his wife had once tried to “hang themselves,” but when they were found hanging—“he in a barn, she in a closet”—they were rescued. Zamiączki added that “now, sitting chained in prison with a guard, [Baran again] wanted to hang himself, and was barely saved.”  Baran’s brother, Simon, confirmed that the couple had tried to end their lives. Another witness, Woyciech Maciusek, elaborated on the incident. Apparently, another brother had failed to repay Baran some money, which was “not a small sum,” and this was the reason for the attempted suicide. But other than that, Maciusek said, Baran had “conducted himself properly since youth.” Zamiączki offered the information that Baran and his wife quarreled a lot and could not live together. After she squabbled with someone over sorcery, Baran had moved out. His brother, Simon, testified that Baran moved around a lot, living “here and there,” because he had a tendency to get involved in conflicts and fights. The two remaining witnesses added nothing new. The court summoned Walenty Słęczka and his godfather (kmotr), Wawrzyniec Perdek. Słęczka said: “Jan Baran went to the grand altar, then he stepped back . . . into the middle of the church, and I saw that the Most Holy Sacrament fell on his hand, and I told my godfather next to me, and I also said to [Baran]: ‘You evil man, what did you do?’ ” He added: “I testify that he went behind us with an extended hand [manu extensa] and I did not see him put [the host] back in his mouth and eat it.” The second witness elaborated: “I knelt behind my godson, who said to me: ‘Godfather, this man put the Most Holy Sacrament in his hand.’ When we confronted him, he replied: ‘It’s not for any sorcery or witchcraft.’ ”  Baran explained that when he had received the “Most Holy Sacrament” on the festival of St. John, it had stuck far up on the roof of his mouth. As he tried to remove it, he coughed “and it fell out, so having caught it into my hand, I put it back into my mouth.” “I did the wrong thing, but what can I do?” The court continued to probe, but Baran insisted on his story, pointing out that the others would not have been able to see him well. Baran added: “I don’t know what the world has against me; people bother me and my wife

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over the hanging, because my brother did me wrong.” People had, in fact, incited him to hang himself over the brother’s debt. With the testimonies of the accused and the witnesses in stark contradiction, the court, citing Jodocus Damhouder’s Praxis Rerum Criminalium, sent Baran to torture because “he had accepted the Venerable Sacrament in his hand.” Even under torture—strappado or the rack and then burning—Baran insisted that his version of the story was true. After debating the case “diligently,” the court classified it as “a crime laesae Maiestatis Divinae,” a crime against God’s Majesty, and vowed that “no such offence shall remain unpunished.” Baran’s act was considered a crime and injury against God but, even worse, the court argued, it was committed in public. Although the punishment for such “a crime against God” would have been the stake, the court was willing to take into account the contradictions in the testimonies, and seems to have accepted Baran’s assertion about swallowing the host, while conceding that because of his “simplicity, which is common among people of his condition,” Baran “had kept the Venerable Sacrament in his hand for a certain amount of time.” This itself was considered a crime. To “conform the punishment to the crime,” the court ordered that Baran’s right hand be severed and burned. They did not demand the usual sentence of death by burning, which would have followed if the court had accepted the prosecution’s entire argument. But by focusing on Baran’s touching of the eucharistic wafer and calling it crimen laesae Maiestatis Divinae, the court effectively criminalized behavior that simply went against the customs of eucharistic worship in the Catholic Church; since the ninth century, the laity had been prohibited from touching the wafer. Among the Protestants, in contrast, touching their Communion bread was not unusual and was no crime. The crime for which Baran was sentenced was not robbery and theft of church vessels or even an illicit use of the Eucharist, but rather an accidental touch of the host—in public. The public aspect of the perceived “mistreatment” of the Eucharist was key; it led Baran to torture and mutilation.

From Sin to Crime— Confession and Public Display of Irreverence The courts’ anxiety over the touch of the Eucharist testifies to their embrace of Catholic doctrines. Unauthorized lay contact with the Eucharist was not


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their only concern. The Communion, which the Catholic Church increasingly feared “Christians would receive unworthily,” was another. Following the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Church began to insist on each person participating in at least one annual confession and Communion during the Easter season. This expectation was not new; it had been instituted, albeit not effectively implemented, at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The Lateran Council ordered that: “All the faithful of either sex, after they have reached the age of discernment, should individually confess all their sins in a faithful manner to their own priest at least once a year, and let them take care to do what they can to perform the penance imposed on them. Let them reverently receive the sacrament of the eucharist at least at Easter unless they think, for a good reason and on the advice of their own priest, that they should abstain from receiving it for a time. Otherwise they shall be barred from entering a church during their lifetime and they shall be denied a Christian burial at death.” This requirement of at least an annual confession was a consequence of a rapid spread of heresy in medieval Europe. As the Church canon itself makes clear, it also underscored the importance of the “sacrament of the eucharist,” which the Fourth Lateran Council officially affirmed to be “the body of Christ.” Still, access to the Eucharist was restricted to certain liturgical seasons. Lent and Easter became nearly the only times when the faithful could confess and receive Communion, except for some localized festivals when Communion might have been distributed according to custom. In the wake of the Reformation, the participants of the Council of Trent accepted the Lateran canon, but to defend this Catholic sacrament against Protestant challenges added an elaborate and polemical debate on the “sacrament of penance,” of which confession and absolution of sins by the priest were a part. In his study of confession in post-Reformation German lands, David Myers notes that confession and Communion became more frequent as a result of the Reformation and Protestant practices. Polish synods also promoted an annual confession between Palm Sunday and Dominica in albis, the first Sunday after Easter, although local traditions suggest that Communion also was given on festivals such as St. John, the Assumption of Mary, or at Christmas. Synodal legislation ruled that confession was to be heard openly “in a place that is not dark, hidden, or concealed, but rather prominent . . . so that the communicants can be seen.” Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski’s pastoral address of 1607 ordered that the newly introduced

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confessionals be in an “open and public space, but sufficiently remote from the main altar.” Jesuits were particularly eager to implement the Tridentine reforms on the annual confession and Communion; their annual reports duly chronicle the number of confessions heard and Communion wafers distributed, along with numbers of baptisms, conversions, and other pastoral tasks, such as ministering to convicts on their way to execution. Until about the mid-seventeenth century, Jesuit reports included vivid stories of success and caution about the benefits of confession and Communion. In 1611, for example, Jesuits in Poznań wrote of a woman convicted of blasphemy and “mockery of God and the Sacrosanct Sacrament,” who was sentenced to death by burning; they had managed to “save her soul” by hearing her confession “in preparation for the stake,” administering Communion, and accompanying her to the execution spot, where “she burned whispering the names of Jesus and Mary.” It was a story of Church triumph and personal redemption. The Jesuit reports recounted instances of abuses of the sacraments in far more cases of “sacrilege” than can be accounted for in the surviving court records. For Jesuits, such offenses were sins—if still “sacrilegious,”—but not crimes. The culprits were mostly women; some were instantly punished for their “sacrilegious” Communion without confession, but by God—not by the courts, the Church, or the laws. In 1632, as the Jesuits related, a girl in Rawa was stricken with a great pain that revealed her “sacrilegious” deed; two years later, a woman in Lublin was “punished with blindness” for taking the Eucharist without confession, but after confession, she immediately recovered; and another in Poznań became afflicted with a stutter until she confessed. A woman in Wilno, who “neglected religious duties” and refused to confess and take Communion, suffered during labor, but upon calling “one of ours,” delivered two healthy infants. Poznań Jesuits told of a woman who was possessed and given to “screaming horrendous blasphemies” and practicing witchcraft; after two Jesuits were called in, she made a confession and “was nourished with celestial food.” They had “rescued her insane mind.” Also in Poznań, a woman was discovered to have “usurped” or improperly used the “sacraments of penitence and eucharist” for more than twenty years, until “the Divine light enlightened her” and she averted hell. Another, in Jarosław, was apparently stricken with bleeding and a nauseating sickness because she took Communion without confessing. The Jesuit report states that in 1633, a woman in Sandomierz stole “the Most Sacred Eucharist” with


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her “sacrilegious mouth,” and sold it to Jews, but whenever she wanted to take the money out, it became filled with blood, and soon the truth emerged. This tale was reminiscent of a story mentioned in 1213 in a letter of Pope Innocent III. In 1646, a miracle of eucharistic blood was to have happened in Cracow against the doubts of the “mocking Calvinists.” But none of these many Jesuit accounts criminalized noncompliance with Catholic doctrines of penance and Communion, not even in the case said to have taken place in Sandomierz. The secular courts, in contrast to the Jesuits, saw direct contact that laypeople had with the Eucharist, improper confession, and “unworthy” Communion as crimes of sacrilege. During hearings, they tried to ascertain whether Communion had been taken “sacrilegiously,” and whether the accused or the witnesses had properly confessed. In a 1669 case of murder in Lublin, a widow named Apolonia told the court that she “had confessed in Sulisławice and took communion.” “But I did not steal it,” she added, “I did not steal it.” The interrogation then moved to its principal focus—the murder. Five years later, the same court tried Zophia, apparently a minor and an orphan, accused of taking the Eucharist out of her mouth into her hands. She had gone to church with two other neighborhood children. She told the court that the children had, “dressed [Zophia] in their nice clothes [suknie].” She had not gone to confession, and when she received Communion, a woman yelled at her, “You took the Most Holy Sacrament but you did not confess,” whereupon Zophia, terrified, removed the host from her mouth, and the priest ran over and took it out of her hand. At her interrogation, Zophia implicated Anna Polesakowa, who she said had told her to take the host and bring it to her. Zophia later retracted this accusation, but the court arrested Anna anyway and also a friend, Hedwiga Kurdupka, as accomplices in Zophia’s crime of “sacrilege.” The court concluded that Zophia had committed sacrilege “out of mere ignorance,” “not indignation or malice,” and reduced the punishment. In an unusually lenient way, it sentenced Zophia to twenty lashes and expulsion, and released Anna Polesakowa and Hedwiga Kurdupka. This was not a final sentence. The number of lashes was increased to thirty for “Zophia the minor.” To “avoid corporal punishment,” Polesakowa and Kurdupka had taken an oath before a crucifi x that “we did not entice this girl to go and take communion.” They were all criminally tried for a religious sin, not a civil crime.

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Women, Magic, and the Eucharistic Wafer The courts, in a further practice of enforcing laws of the Catholic Church, deemed the unauthorized use of the Eucharist outside its sacramental function a crime far more serious than the failure to make confession. Men were accused of sacrilege for coming in contact with the host in the context of a church robbery. Women were brought to court primarily for intentional theft of the consecrated wafer to use in healing, in magic rites, or as some charged, for sale to Jews. With belief in the wafer’s miraculous power to heal the sick (propagated by Jesuits and other clerics) and by miracle stories circulating at the time, it is little wonder that women accused of desecrating the host were convinced of the wafer’s healing properties and sought it for their own use. In 1644 in Lublin, Regina Zaięska stood accused by her son, Jacob, of inciting him to steal the consecrated wafer. Jacob testified that his mother “had asked him if he had gone to confession”; when he replied that indeed he had, she instructed him, “When you go to communion, bring me the Most Holy Sacrament.” At Communion, he took the wafer from the priest and “deliberately dropped it but the altar boy caught it with his hand.” After Jacob was arrested, the court demanded to know “whether he had [really] confessed at the time.” Jacob contradicted his earlier statement and said that he had not confessed, and insisted that when he deliberately dropped the host, he did not touch it with his hand. Under torture, Jacob repeated that his mother had convinced him to steal the host; he evidently also had implicated his aunt, and said he had done so only because he felt sorry for his mother, who had begged him not to accuse her in court. Regina was called to testify and denied her son’s charge, even though he confronted her faceto-face and insisted that it was true. The court inquired whether she had ever practiced magic; at first she denied it, but then she said that along with her friend (who was now dead), she had determined the whereabouts of some stolen horses by putting “a piece of coal on a sieve” and “a needle through bread with crust.”  (Putting a needle through a Eucharistic wafer was often referred to in accusations of host desecration against Jews.) Had she herself ever “dropped the Most Holy Sacrament from her mouth?” “No,” she said, but her stepdaughter Anna had, and she was “already dead.”  Begging for mercy under torture, Regina admitted that she had dabbled in magic, but never with the eucharistic wafer. Under strappado, Regina confessed that, in


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trying to prevent the effectiveness of spells that would spoil the butter, she and her friend had used an old formula against evil spells by spitting here and there. Alas, she conceded, the counterspells did not work, although she used them for four years to save milk from spoiling (lekowała mleko). None of these efforts involved the Eucharist. After the examiner had burned the sides of her body with candles, she complained, “I do not know why my son accused me, may God punish him, he is a bad son.”  The court found no evidence of Regina’s complicity in her son’s act and released her from prison. The fate of her son is unknown. In 1664, also in Lublin, Maria Adamowa, from the nearby village of Kamionka, was examined under torture after an accusation that she had used the Communion wafer to strain milk to keep it “from being taken away by witches.”  Maria explained that she “went to Miastkowo to church, and first went to confession, but I did not say anything during my confession, and then I received Lord Jesus [the wafer], and having said a prayer I left the church and placed [the host] in a kerchief into a little box and went home,” and began to strain milk. Maria’s aunt, Anna Woitaczkowa, had taught her how to strain the milk, and apparently advised her that when she was done, she should burn the kerchief in which she had kept the host while straining the milk. After three weeks, Maria burned the kerchief. She later implicated two other women, but changed her testimony under torture and began to deny the whole affair, saying she had not used the host. Another woman, Katarzyna Pawłowa, who also had brought a host home wrapped in a kerchief with a similar intention, was summoned to court. She contended that during a visit about three years earlier, Maria had said that “she felt very good when she [drank] milk strained through the Most Holy Sacrament.” Katarzyna said that neither she nor her neighbor, Gwaszkowa, had practiced this themselves. Katarzyna was sent to torture on the rack, but continued to maintain her innocence, insisting that she had been accused out of spite. Anna, Maria’s aunt, told the court that she also had been unjustly accused and that Maria had tried to save her own life by accusing her. Anna contended that she had neither taught Maria how to strain milk through the consecrated host, nor had she ever done it herself; indeed, she had known nothing about the practice until after Maria’s arrest. Whereas Katarzyna had been tortured only on the rack, Anna was also burnt with candles, but she maintained innocence and pleaded “for Lord’s mercy.” The court sentenced Maria Adamowa to beheading “in the presence of Anna

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Woitaczkowa and Katarzyna Pawłowa,” no doubt as a warning to them; afterward, the two were released.

Salt, Holy Water, and Spells In his 1607 pastoral letter, Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski warned against “impious” and “superstitious” use of sacramental and ceremonial objects, among them salt, water, wine, myrrh, candles, palms, and incense. At times, the courts seem to have concurred. In 1611 in Kazimierz, a suburb of Cracow, a woman also named Katarzyna was accused of having tried to cure a cow that was not giving milk by washing its teats in holy water obtained from churches. In Wiśnicz in 1689, a mother and daughter accused of witchcraft confessed to using holy water mixed with other concoctions with the intention to heal (especially cows that were failing to give milk)— or to harm, as their accusers may have believed. Both mother and daughter were sentenced to death; the mother was to be burned alive at the stake after watching the execution of her daughter by decapitation. Their trial prompted the investigation of other women; one woman, charged with witchcraft, was accused of dropping cow’s manure in front of a man’s house, where the cow died soon thereafter. After torture, she was sentenced to decapitation, her body to be burned at the stake. The use not only of holy objects but also of unauthorized prayers, spells, and rituals that inverted Catholic rites led to court sentences. Such use was considered blasphemous by secular courts. In 1662, a woman named Katarzyna was charged with witchcraft and brought to court in Wiśnicz. The wife of Franciszek Łodziński, administrator of a nearby small village, had died, and Łodziński was accusing Katarzyna of practicing witchcraft or healing magic; she was said to have “practiced magic and superstition” for healing, making “a sign of the cross in reverse on people’s heads.” She also was said to have poured melted wax to divine the future, and used regular water (presumably, in place of holy water) to sprinkle people while murmuring spells. “Worst of all, she violated the honor of the Most Holy Virgin,” by negating the Hail Mary: “Hail not Mary; not full of grace, the Lord is not with thee, not blessed among the women, etc.” Łodziński, maintaining that these practices were “against the holy Catholic faith,” asked the court to determine whether Katarzyna had caused his wife’s death. The trial that followed is a fascinating account of popular religion, healing methods, and patterns of consumption. Katarzyna did not deny her healing


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practices; in fact, she described some in detail. Yes, she had used the inverted Hail Mary to get rid of nightmares. Jaundice could be treated, she told the court, with a drink made of tops of nettle brewed with dried ginger or with sweet rush (acorus). Sometimes she added dried orange peels, which were expensive and rare in Poland. Headaches could be cured by hanging a kerchief, in which a crucifi x had been wrapped earlier, over a door. She also used holy water to pour melted wax. She had only said the reverse Hail Mary thrice “because priests had rebuked her about it,” and she had harmed no one, healing only jaundice and nightmares, and sometimes helping women with problems of fertility. Katarzyna apparently believed that she had the power not only to heal but also to predict the death of a sick person. In her testimony, she claimed that she knew someone would live if she said the rosary flawlessly, but if she made an error, the person in whose name she said the prayers would die. The court interviewed witnesses and interrogated Katarzyna for a number of days. She continued to deny any role in the death of Stanisław Łodziński’s wife, but on the second day under torture, she implicated a nobleman named Stanisław Poręmbski, saying that he had asked her to spread a substance near the Łodzińskis’ household that he had obtained from a woman in Nowe Miasto. She maintained her stance under torture, but the court decided she must be convicted of her crimes, that “first she dared to violate the honor of the Most Holy Virgin, saying quod absurdum et absit, ‘Hail not Mary’— all the way to the end—using this blasphemy to practice magic and superstition and to heal people.” Any role she may have played in the death of Łodziński’s wife had become secondary. Her primary crimes were now seen as religious, based on her beliefs in the power of Christian sacred objects and their unauthorized use. She was sentenced to death by burning, but an appeal from some prominent local men—for unmentioned reasons—lessened the severity of her sentence; she was to be beheaded instead, and her body burned afterward.

Blaspheming with “Foul Lips” During the Reformation, views of the Virgin Mary, of the saints, and even differing concepts of divinity became a sharp point of division between Catholics and Protestants. In Poland, before the Reformation and until the mid-sixteenth century, such cases had been heard in ecclesiastical courts in accordance with canon law, which prescribed penitence and reconciliation

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with the Church for first-time offenders. Repeat offenders (relapsi) were released to the secular arm for much more serious punishment, often death, since the Church could not inflict death on its own. In 1541, for example, a “blasphemus” layman, Stanisław Thurek, was brought to the episcopal court in Cracow. Thurek was accused of blaspheming against “saints of God . . . , against the most glorious virgin mother of the omnipotent God, our lord Jesus Christ.”  The sentencing decree, preserved in Acta episcopalia in the archdiocesan archive in Cracow, reports that Thurek, in a tavern on Shoemaker’s Street, “in the presence of many faithful spoke impious insulting words against the saints and the most holy virgin Mary,” words “damnable” and “dissonant with the holy Christian religion.”  For these “many blasphemies” and for causing “scandals within the city of Cracow,” Thurek was sentenced to an auto-da-fé, a public act of reconciliation with the Church, in front of the Church of Mary the Virgin on the city’s main market square, “to do penitence in bare feet, uncovered head, wearing mourning dress.” In 1545, perhaps in response to a bull by Pope Paul III, Licet ab initio, Bishop Piotr Gamrat established an office of the inquisition to investigate cases like that of Stanisław Thurek, justifying its establishment by the need to curb the spread of “blasphemies against the saints and the Holy Virgin,” and the spread of heretical books, including the “Holy Scriptures,” which were read in homes. The office of the inquisition was short lived and, after the legal reforms of the mid-sixteenth century, cases of “blasphemy” were tried in episcopal courts only if the “blasphemer” was a member of Catholic clergy. All other such cases were to be tried in secular court, a practice that continued through much of the eighteenth century, sometimes with deathly consequences, since the secular law, as the cases discussed above have suggested, was much more ruthless than the ecclesiastical. Bartłomiej Groicki, a court clerk and author of Polish adaptations of legal manuals based on the medieval German law, Speculum Saxonum, and the 1532 criminal code, the Carolina, emphasized the magistrate’s responsibility to punish blasphemy: If someone, with foul [plugawe] lips and bad and insolent heart against God Lord, were to read what is not to be read, charge what is not to be charged in order to offend his holy omnipotence [wszechmość] and goodness, or [if someone] were to say anything improper and unfair against Lady Mary or other divine matters . . . such a blasphemer is to be charged by the magistrate and be punished by death according to his guilt and


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the severity of his sin, and also according to his status and health. And if someone were already imprisoned, the magistrate must be informed, and the court and chief magistrate [wójt] must act on the basis of this information so that such blasphemy may be punished by law and so that such sins may not multiply among the people.

When it came to heresy, Groicki acknowledged that “spiritual law,” that is, Church law, was much more lenient than secular law since it gave the heretic one more chance: “The spiritual law is easier on the heretics. In C. ad abolendam de haereticis, it is written that if heretics . . . wanted to reject their errors, they should avoid punishment. But afterward, if they fall into the apostasy [again], then according to spiritual law they should be handed over to the secular authorities, so they may be punished by the sword.”  In western Europe, as Brad Gregory has written, magistrates, too, often followed the dictum of the canon law, seeking to spare heretics’ or blasphemers’ lives, at least temporarily by giving them one more chance. In Poland, blasphemers tried in secular courts were either punished by death or, in much rarer cases, used as a public auto-da-fé that served to reaffirm the violated Catholic doctrine. In 1671, Lazur Samuelowicz, a Jewish arrendator (a leaseholder) of a brewery in the village of Kolbuszowa in southern Poland, was summoned to the court, since his daughter Reszka had disappeared, to answer for her blasphemy “against Blessed Virgin Mary.”  He swore to the court that “he could do nothing to bring her and . . . he does not know where his daughter is.” The court could not get to the bottom of the case because it could find no witnesses except “only one person, that is, one married woman, who was also the one spreading the rumor [która to była rozniesła].” The court consulted with a local priest, and decided to try to “repair the Honor of the Most Holy Virgin Mother of God.” Reszka’s father was ordered to “retract the blasphemy on Sunday in public in front of the Kolbuszowa church, in the presence of twelve Jews” and to apologize to all the “prelates of the Kolbuszowa church.” In addition, he was to donate the huge sum of 424 złotys to the Church and spend two weeks in prison in place of the “blaspheming” daughter “he could not deliver to court.” Samuelowicz’s wife and their remaining daughters also were told to retract the said “blasphemy.” Reszka herself was banished from the town in absentia. In violation of the existing law, this case represented a complete merger of ecclesiastical and secular courts, with the final decree signed jointly by the secular officials and three local priests. It was clearly a weak case, even for a court in premodern Poland. With no credible

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witnesses, no culprit, and no damning evidence, the court might have been uncomfortable pushing the charges further than it did, but since damning charges had been brought, it felt the need to take them up—ultimately to the financial and theological benefit of the Catholic Church. The punishment of the Jewish family as a unit was highly symbolic: The curious number of Jews to be present for the retraction— twelve, instead of the ten required for a Jewish quorum—likely referred to the symbolic meaning of twelve in both Jewish and Christian scriptures. Jacob had twelve sons, thus, the twelve tribes of Israel; Jesus elected twelve disciples; and according to the controversial Book of Revelations, the New Jerusalem of the messianic era would have twelve gates. But, more obviously, the public retraction of the said blasphemy— on a Sunday, no less—in front of a church became a spectacle of public affirmation of Catholic doctrines by Jews. If the circumstances of Reszka’s blasphemy are murky, those behind charges of “blasphemy” against Szmul Dubiński, a Jew from Rozwadów tried in 1726 before the magistrate of Rzeszów in southern Poland, are much clearer. Szmul made a living by selling alcohol from his house, and Christians often came there to drink. One day, on the feast of the Visitation of Mary Virgin (July 2), Franciszek Kowalski, a local councilman, came to Szmul’s house with a friend, Jakub Lisowski, and ordered a gallon of beer. Szmul testified that he joined them to discuss local political affairs, criticizing the local elected officials: one was “too lazy,” one “too young,” and another “too stupid” to become mayor. Kowalski said that other places were no better, noting that in Sandomierz, “a large royal city, Nowiński, a converted Jew, was the chief magistrate.” “It is true he is the chief magistrate,” Szmul responded, “but it cost him several hundred złoty.” Szmul elaborated that Nowiński had stayed with him while looking for a stepson “who had disappeared,” and had confided in Szmul that “priests are trying to persuade me to implicate Jews and say that Jews have caught and killed him.” When Kowalski insisted that Catholic clergy would not do something so unseemly, Szmul is said to have told a story of a woman whose child had died and who spread rumors that the child’s body had been found near Jewish homes. Szmul added, “Jews were murdered and attacked on account of this child.” It was all falsehood, Kowalski replied. But Szmul retorted, “You Poles say that we need your blood to wash.” Kowalski then told the court that Szmul had begun a discussion about God by saying, “Our God is older than your Catholic one,” and had asked


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other Christian men drinking nearby, “Which God do you believe in?” Kowalski responded, “I believe in the God who was crucified for us.” Szmul pointed through the window toward a statue with a crucifi x made of clay, and asked, “So you believe in God that [a potter] made of clay and put it there?” Kowalski countered, “I do, but this is only a representation of his suffering on earth, Lord God himself is in heaven.” But Szmul pressed, “Why did he let himself be crucified, if he is so powerful?” Kowalski warned, “Szmul, don’t debate like that, God is God . . . don’t debate, he was crucified because he was merciful, he suffered voluntarily to save us. . . . Szmul, don’t debate like that with someone smarter [than I], lest you fall into some labyrinth. I am just a simple man.” If Kowalski was willing to give Szmul a pass for such discussions, Kowalski’s companion, Lisowski, was much less so inclined. “Having heard the blasphemies, he wanted to punch [Szmul] in the face,” but Kowalski, fearing further escalation, stopped him. When the court summoned the other men who witnessed the exchange, Lisowski confirmed Kowalski’s testimony. He had not hit Szmul because he “feared punishment from the lord of the manor.” The third witness, Mathias Trafidło, corroborated Kowalski’s testimony regarding the quarrel “about gods” between Kowalski and a “very drunk” Szmul, who, trying to end the quarrel, said, “May there be two good Gods, this one good, and that one good.” Gregorius Jasiński said that “the drunk Szmul” talked about God with Kowalski. Valentinus Moskal, a witness on behalf of Szmul, insisted that he “did not hear any discussion about God or about faith, unless it had happened before I came.” But Moskal said that when the local organ player brought freshly baked bread, “which Jews baked on our holy day,” Szmul and Kowalski again began to squabble. “It is not right to bake bread on a holy day,” Kowalski apparently told Szmul, “You violate our holidays but you observe your Sabbath.” The court asked Catholic theologians for an expert opinion on whether Szmul Dubiński had, indeed, committed blasphemy against the Catholic religion. On December 13, 1726, the commission of four clerics— among them, two lecturers of theology and a provost of a local Piarist college in Rzeszów—filed an affidavit that Szmul Dubiński had committed “a formal heretical blasphemy against God and the teachings of the Catholic faith.” The court referred to “the infidel blasphemer, Szmul Dubiński” and the “injury to God’s honor” committed with “his sacrilegious and rabid mouth,” and sentenced him to death by burning at the stake after his tongue was first ripped out. Armed with legal manuals

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like the one written by Groicki, the courts had increasingly assumed the role of protectors of Catholicism.

“Blasphemy against God Himself ”—Violation of Sacred Images In 1627, a court in Jarosław, a town on a principal trade route from Cracow to Przemyśl and eastward, and the site of a large annual fair, considered another case of crime—laesae maiestatis divinae (desecration of a holy image) (a blasphemy against God himself ). According to the court, which cited Jodocus Damhouder’s manual on criminal justice, a Jew, Jokier of Cracow, had arrived in Jarosław for the fair and committed “blasphemy, the gravest of all sins, not by words but by deeds.” Since “Jews only have a few houses in town,” Jokier had rented a room from a Christian man, Błażej Żukowicz, who had asked a tenant to vacate the room for the duration of the fair. The tenant, a goldsmith, left behind an image “of the most holy Trinity.” Jokier, who shared the room with four other Jews, was charged with destroying that image, “disrespecting the Highest God and Christian Religion.” When Jokier denied the charges, saying there was no evidence against him, the accusers— Błażej Żukowicz and Andrzej Złotnik, the goldsmith— displayed the destroyed painting. They said that when Jokier was confronted with the damaged image, he offered to “pay for it” or “to buy another,” whereupon he fled the town, proving his guilt. But Jokier told a different story, saying he had paid for his lodging and left town after the fair ended, only to find himself arrested along an open road three days later. Jokier cited Jodocus Damhouder’s Praxis rerum crimunalium in his defense; in chapter 61, no. 7, “Damhouder says that in cases of secretive or hidden kind only God is the judge and defender, and the judicial inquiry does not belong to a human forum.” The court had no evidence other than the goldsmith’s allegations and, therefore, it violated Damhouder’s injunction that evidence should be examined carefully and that a court should not rely on presuppositions, “lest an innocent be condemned.” Local Jews must have contacted the town’s owner, Duchess Anna Ostrogska, who ordered a special commission to investigate the charges. The commission examined the painting and the goldsmith’s hammer, some suspecting that the destruction had been the goldsmith’s own doing. It learned that Złotnik had been rather unhappy about Żukowicz’s decision to rent his room. When the other Jews had left and only Jokier remained, Złotnik sought to move back


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in, but Jokier objected, “What do you want, I have paid for the time, and so I am staying.” Złotnik apparently erupted, “You smelly [Jew], you’ll see, you will pay for it!” Jokier’s defense rested on legal arguments: there were no witnesses, and the charge was brought against a Jew by two Christians; in such cases, a concurring testimony by a Jewish witness was required. The commission concluded that Jews often stayed in Christian homes and Christian inns “in which such paintings also are found” with no similar charges ever brought before. Since there was not “a certain offender,” the commission decided it could not bring criminal charges, and Jokier was therefore ordered simply to take an oath in the synagogue of nearby Przemyśl. Jarosław Jews were to inscribe his oath in the town’s magistrate records. Similar stories of Jewish vandalization of images and crucifi xes circulated in Europe from the Middle Ages through the early modern period. Some sought to promote new sites of Christian worship, as in Cambron, in the province of Hannegau, or Hainaut in today’s Belgium, where a legend of a Jewish defacing of a Christian holy image emerged around a Marian cult site. According to a 1329 letter from Pope John XXII that issued indulgences to pilgrims of a newly built chapel in Cambron, a baptized Jew “falsely called” Willelmus stabbed the painting “of the most glorious Virgin” in the Cistercian monastery there. Willelmus, though under suspicion, “had remained unpunished” because he persistently “asserted” his innocence. But years later, when a bleeding Virgin Mary appeared to an elderly and (according to some versions) crippled blacksmith, Johannes Flamens, “a Catholic Christian of laudable and honest life,” and demanded revenge, Johannes challenged Willelmus to a duel or to a trial by combat. “With cooperation from the divine grace,” the elderly Johannes won the fight. Willelmus confessed to his “abominable crime” and was punished. A chapel was built on the site, and indulgences were granted to promote the new Marian cult. Subsequent versions added a miracle to the story that the image bled after it had been stabbed. The story, as noted by Eric Zafran, became a cause célèbre, entered Catholic exempla, and, from the late fifteenth century, appeared in books and pamphlets found around Europe, including in Poland. The story was mentioned in a 1618 book, Zwierciadło Korony Polskiey (A Mirror of the Polish Crown ), written by a Polish Catholic, Sebastyan Miczyński, along with a story of a 1613 Polish case from Lublin, where a certain Jew, “son of Moses from Lublin,” was said to have rented a room (or a store) in a house of a prominent aristocratic family in the town’s market square. (The house still stands as a

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prime example of renaissance architecture in the old town in Lublin, Rynek 8, named after the Lubomirskis, a prominent aristocratic family.) The word “Jesus” was painted on the ceiling of the Lublin house; according to Miczyński, the Jew “beat it and smeared it.” After this act was discovered by Jesuit priests, the Jew was taken to the castle court to be sentenced to death, but his life was spared; he was sentenced, instead, to undergo a public auto-da-fé. Miczyński reported that the Jew, with a “smelly candle” in his hand and dressed in a penitential outfit of rough linen, was tied “to a cross” and compelled to participate in a public procession from church to church, preceded by a black banner with the name “Jesus” painted on it in silver. At the Lubomirski house, the Jew was flogged. Contemporary Jesuit records say nothing of the event, mentioning only a conversion of a certain Jew, Abraham, to Catholicism around 1615 in Lublin, and a 1616 incident in Sandomierz, where a Jew is said to have offended an image of “the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven” by hurling invectives at it and vomiting. Here, too, the surviving court records seem to remain silent. Perhaps it was such cases that caused Rabbi Moses Isserles to warn Jews renting apartments from Christians to be extra careful lest Christians leave “idols” behind. In Jokier’s case, the town owner’s intervention made a difference between life and death; Jews were relatively secure in private towns. Significantly, in Poland, unlike in the West, neither this case nor the cases from Lublin or Sandomierz led to the establishment of a Catholic shrine. In fact, few shrines emerged in Poland as a result of Christian or Jewish desecration or sacrilege, and miracle stories are also missing from any of the narratives. Perhaps in the post-Reformation era, miracles associated with sacrilege were less believable. Christians, too, were occasionally accused of violating holy images— even beyond instances of the early Protestant iconoclasm. In 1681, the magistrate of Cracow brought charges against a man named Ziółkowski for “excesses.” Ziółkowski was said to have ripped two paper images from a wall in another man’s house— one image of the crucifi x and one of a newly sainted Stanisław Kostka, a young nobleman who had defied his parents and joined the Jesuits. During interrogation, Ziółkowski and his host sought to show that the destruction of the images was “without any intention, or deliberation, only accidentally in drunken stupor.” Ziółkowski explained that the room had a very low ceiling, so when he unleashed his sword, he slashed the paper images, but “being a good Catholic, he would have never thought of doing anything like


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that [deliberately].” He was ready to swear an oath that this was true, and offered to pay to repair the damage. For this publica violentia, the court sentenced him to a fine and to half a year in prison. Such cases involving the relationship between church and state highlight anxieties about the sacred and its public violation. Jokier’s case illustrates the possible roots of such accusations—the sacred manipulated in courts in pursuit of personal vendettas or, perhaps, political goals. Once charges of “crimes” were brought to light, even if the clergy may have considered them sins, courts were obliged to take them up. In outcomes of the trials discussed here, Catholic doctrines and practices were publicly affirmed and their violations severely punished. The trials were not used for overtly political ends, that is, no pamphlets describing the events were published and no power struggle over jurisdiction lurked in the background. The accused were tried and the story ended. Not one of these events entered Polish Christian and Jewish lore, in contrast to the more prominent cases that took place in more complex historical context, responding to concrete political goals and religious agendas.

Blasphemy with a Pen: Matatias Kalahora and Kazimierz Łyszczyński In a short, rhymed undated pamphlet in Yiddish, a Jewish poet commemorated the deaths of three Jewish “martyrs,” among them “the pure and holy reb Matis,” or Matatias Kalahora, executed in 1663 after a long trial for blasphemy. The poet celebrated Kalahora as a learned man, a doctor, and a Kabbalist; Polish records identify him as an apothecary. He was not only a learned man, including in non-Jewish books (sifrei ho-hitsoynies), but “was accustomed to study with Christian priests.” Despite such frequent contacts with Christian priests, the poet intoned, Kalahora “did not stray from his path” and “remained with the truth and holiness.” Yet, his relationship with “Christian priests” caused his downfall and his death as a martyr to his faith. Matatias Kalahora had been denounced as the author of an anti-Christian manuscript discovered in the Dominican Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Cracow, and promptly delivered to the court by a German Dominican preacher, Sarvatius Hebellius, who had been living in the Cracow monastery. Court documents say that Kalahora had stopped Hebellius on a public square in Cracow “under the pretext to debate articles of the Christian

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faith . . . namely about the coming of the Messiah,” whereupon, the Dominican had seized the opportunity, hoping for the Jew’s conversion, and the two engaged in a debate. Kalahora “was not versed in the vernacular,” but “knew Latin and Italian well,” and Hebellius invited him to the monastery to continue “the unfinished disputation.” The two continued to discuss the Messiah based on “many arguments from the Sacred Scriptures, which the Jew knew well.” Kalahora suggested that the two meet two days later to resume the conversation, and promised a written response. Hebellius waited “eagerly” for three days in vain, then a manuscript in German turned up in the choir at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, in which Hebellius “easily recognized” Jewish arguments. He delivered the work to the ecclesiastical court, both in the “German original” and in a Latin translation that “he himself had faithfully made.” The ecclesiastical court, in turn, forwarded the work to the castle court and the city captain, and news of this “most atrocious work” spread quickly through the town. Kalahora’s accusers claimed that he was, “conscious of his crimes,” and left Cracow for Jarosław under “the pretext to attend a fair.” After being gone for “many weeks,” Kalahora returned to Cracow (two months later), around the Jewish festival of Succot; he was lying low, not attending a synagogue or even living in his own house, but hiding with others, so it was claimed. Kalahora was tried for public blasphemy against “Jesus Christ and his Most Holy Mother,” whose “angelic purity” was thus “tainted,” by the “infamous booklet”; he was condemned for a “most atrocious crime,” whose mention would “astonish human mind, horrify the ears, and stupefy the tongue.” The Cracow court— concerned with the public nature of this “crime,” the disputations, and the now infamous booklet— sentenced him to death “as an example” to “deter” similar “crimes,” and “to frighten other Jews” from daring to commit “similarly nefarious” acts. The court decreed that Kalahora be subjected to “torments” and mutilation, and then taken outside the city to be burned alive at the stake along with his “perverse” work. Jewish leaders in Cracow tried to save Kalahora’s life, seeking to have the case examined by the Crown Tribunal, the court of the highest instance in Poland. Meeting at the time in Piotrków, the tribunal summoned a few witnesses, including two prominent Cracow Jews, an unnamed blind rabbi and Abraham Campsor, and Hieronym Rubinkowski, a man who had converted to Christianity “from Judaism six years before and remained most constant in this faith.” The surviving documents do not provide information about the content of their testimonies, but the court in Piotrków “con-


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cluded” that Matatias Kalahora was indeed “a wicked blasphemer” against “Lord Christ and Blessed Mary, always a virgin, and against the Saints of God” and upheld the death sentence, with some modifications. Kalahora was executed in Piotrków in a public and highly symbolic execution. The executioner was to rip off parts of Kalahora’s lips, then place pages from the “blasphemous” work in his right hand, burning both with torches. His “obstinate” tongue was then to be ripped out and tossed into the fire. Finally, to “expiate” this “unheard-of and most atrocious crime,” he was to be burned at the stake and his ashes scattered by a cannon into the air. In Cracow, the trial of Kalahora incited anti-Jewish violence that lasted through the next year and entered Jewish lore. Though the Yiddish pamphlet commemorating his death was never republished, a similar description of an execution—including the ripping out of the tongue and scattering of ashes by a cannon—was woven into the well-known eighteenth-century story of Walenty Potocki, a “righteous convert” from Wilno. The historical truth behind Kalahora’s own trial and the affair will never be known; inconsistencies in surviving accounts raise questions of the plausibility of Kalahora’s authorship of the anti-Christian pamphlet found in the Dominican church. After all, Kalahora was said not to have known “the vernacular,” presumably neither Polish nor German, given that Hebellius was German. He “knew well Latin and Italian,” yet the blasphemous pamphlet was said to have been written in German and then translated to Latin by Hebellius. Since the prosecution assumed Kalahora’s authorship and thus his guilt, no other suspects were considered. But, beyond the question of who was behind the antiChristian work left in the choir, the motive for the prosecution of Kalahora also remains open. Was it Hebellius’s frustration at Kalahora’s “obstinacy,” since the Jew remained committed to “the truth” of Judaism, or was there another motive that was not in the court records? Extralegal accounts by contemporary chroniclers imply that the convert Hieronim Rubinkowski might have had a personal stake in Kalahora’s persecution and therefore had played, as historian Adam Kaźmierczyk maintains, “a key part in the affair.” Rubinkowski, as a contemporary chronicler wrote, “had delivered this Jew blaspheming against Lord Christ and his Most Blessed Mother to the court.” Kaźmierczyk has suggested that Rubinkowski, trying to “secure a public office,” may have hoped that capturing Kalahora would demonstrate his own “devotion to his new religion.” According to another contemporary chronicler, Wespazjan Kochowski, Rubinkowski claimed that Kalahora also

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had engaged with him in a disputation about Christian religion, implying that Kalahora may have been encouraging the recent convert to return to Judaism—a charge that, by itself, would have merited a death sentence. Indeed, if Rubinkowski had been pursuing a private vendetta, Kalahora’s case would have resembled many others, in which some converts or Christians looking to profit from the situation accused Jews of trying to lure converts back to Judaism. But the final surviving court documents focus only on the written work and on Kalahora’s supposed “audacity” in debating Christian religion in public. That public aspect was more prominent once news of the pamphlet found in the church spread throughout the city. Personal vendetta or not, the public nature of the case seems to have been crucial in Kalahora’s downfall, and even concerted efforts by the Jewish community could not save his life. The courts again were set to defend the Christian religion against a public act of blasphemy. Personal and political factors were much more causal in a case brought against Kazimierz Łyszczyński, a high-profile nobleman and former associate judge (podsędek), convicted of atheism and executed publicly in Warsaw in 1689. His execution was less gruesome than Kalahora’s, primarily because before his death, he affirmed his belief in God and in the Roman Catholic Church in a ritualized auto-da-fé in the Cathedral of St. John in Warsaw before a large audience of prominent noblemen and clergy, among them bishops and archbishops. Łyszczyński, too, was ostensibly tried because of a long manuscript of 265 pages, entitled “De non existentia Dei” and written fifteen years earlier. Immediately after that manuscript had reached the hands of Jan Brzoski, a royal official in Bracław and Łyszczyński’s personal enemy, legal proceedings against Łyszczyński were initiated “to defend God’s honor.” Łyszczyński’s atheism was shocking to everyone. The prosecutor and witnesses testifying against him said it was “never before heard in the Polish world,” and was the worst possible crime, worse than “any other crime against God.” The leading prosecutor, Kurowski, argued that even serious crimes such as “treason [laesae maiestatis], patricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide, sacrilege, apostasy, crime of arianism [anti-Trinitarianism, banned in Poland since 1658], blasphemy,” and many other crimes were lesser than the crime of denying God’s existence. Andrzej Chryzostom Załuski, the bishop of Kiev, said that many lived “as if there was no God, but they did so because they forgot about him, not because they denied his existence.” Another accuser, Jan Chryzostom Pieniążek, offered biblical examples that


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God punished lesser crimes “against his honor.” How much more, then, should someone who denied the existence of God deserve punishment? Łyszczyński’s radical work has not survived; it was publicly burned before his execution, like the anti-Christian treatise attributed to Kalahora. But brief excerpts, quoted in the speeches of the prosecution, did survive. Not only had Łyszczyński concluded that “there is no God,” but that “the man is the creator of God, and God is a human creation. Therefore, humans are the creators of God and God is not a real being [neque Deus est ens reale] but rather he exists in [the human] mind. God is thus a chimera, and chimera is [God].” Łyszczyński took the argument further: “Religion is established by people without religion, so they may be revered. Piety was established by the impious. The fear of God was introduced by those without it, so others might fear them. Faith, said to be of God, is thus a human history.” According to Łyszczyński, by promoting religion, its creators oppressed the common people. If God existed and if religion was indeed a divine creation, there would be “no doubts and no disputations over the Scriptures of Moses and the Gospels (which are false) and there would be no inventors of new sects, nor their followers, like Mahomet and others.” Łyszczyński therefore concluded that the fools are not those who deny divine revelation, but those who promote it. For according to “correct reasoning,” one could only deduce “writing in capital letters ‘Therefore, there is no God.’ ” Łyszczyński’s views were deemed not only radical but dangerous, since disbelief in God, so his foes argued, undermined the very foundation of the society and of the state. Pieniążek argued before the king that an atheist, by obliterating “the essence of God, dissolves all human and divine laws . . . and introduces all kinds of evil.” Łyszczyński had become an enemy of “the Christian Republic.” He had “emptied the heavens, filling its place with chimeras; he made human souls, which are rational and immortal, equal to those of animals; [he made] the whole order of the God’s world ruled by kings and monarchs mixed up and confused with garamantes. He had sought a world without a master, cities without the magistrate, people without the prince, temples without the pontiff, and capital without a court.” It was more troubling that Łyszczyński’s views were not private; he had promoted them in public. His own household had demonstrated the real-life consequences of such views—he had permitted “incest” by marrying his daughter to her cousin, a union forbidden in canon law. And scandalously, Kurowski maintained, this was a man who used to be a court official in

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Brześć, his oaths of office at the judicial bench now invalid, as was his marriage oath; and his confessions and Communion were sacrilegious since they must be made before God, and Łyszczyński could make them “only before some chimera.” Moreover, since Łyszczyński equated “beasts” with humans, how could one assess his oaths when, by this measure, they were not made by a man or a nobleman, but by “a creature equal to a beast?” Pieniążek reasoned further that Łyszczyński’s confessions must have been sacrilegious, not only because he did not believe in God but also because he must have concealed his atheism for years, since “if there had been a true confession before a spiritual father,” Łyszczyński would have had to discuss “his blasphemous writings” and his confessor would have confiscated and burned them. Bishop Załuski argued that there was no absolution for atheism, hence, no redemption for his “enormous crime.” Łyszczyński deserved death. Łyszczyński and his supporters launched a multipronged defense. They argued that, as a nobleman, he had been arrested illegally, without a cause. They stressed that Jan Kazimierz Brzoska, the principal instigator of the trial, owed Łyszczyński a hefty sum of one hundred thousand złotys, and there was, therefore, a clear conflict of interest. Turning to canon law, they pointed out that the Church itself “did not take anybody’s life because of the errors of faith [ex occasione errorum fidei],” nor did it condemn anyone in criminal matters. As to his writings, Łyszczyński was said to have argued that they were written as an exercise in disputation (disputative ), not to affirm any opinion (not affirmative). All efforts of defense were to no avail. The prosecution, with its cadre of supporters, maintained that the case could not be dismissed on grounds of conflict of interest because the accusation against Łyszczyński was a crime of utmost gravity. As to Łyszczyński’s claim that the writings did not represent his views but were simply a rhetorical exercise, why had he used the affirmative first person? And, finally, as to the legal argument, by denying God and thus any “human or divine law,” Łyszczyński had effectively removed himself from any legal framework he might have hoped to use in his defense. “In vain,” said Bishop Załuski, “does he demand law, from which he removed himself because of his godlessness.” Nor could Łyszczyński be regarded as a nobleman, for “truly . . . no atheist can be a nobleman, he who renounces God, renounces his nobility.” The bishop recommended death “lest this stubborn man return to his vomit,” and added, “These horrific writings should be first burned along with the same hand that had written them.”


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On March 10, 1689, at his public abjuration in Warsaw’s Cathedral of St. John, Łyszczyński asked for “leniency during execution [clementia in executione].” His plea did not save his life, but it no doubt earned him a less severe punishment, since the sentence was reduced to decapitation before burning. On March 30, 1689, Łyszczyński was led to the principal market square for a public execution. First, the hand holding his writings was burned, his head was cut off soon after, and his headless body was taken outside the city to be burned at the stake. The execution was seen by contemporaries as a “burnt offering to the Creator,” a necessity if the country were to avoid divine punishment. Łyszczyński’s case became a cause célèbre for the affirmation of Catholicism as a state religion and a warning against straying from the path authorized by the Church. His fate was cited as an example of what happens when a properly brought up Catholic man—the son of Catholic parents, educated in good Catholic schools, even a member of the clergy (Łyszczyński had joined the Jesuits and left the order several years later)—read books imported “from overseas” that were prohibited by the Catholic Church and became a heretic—worse, an atheist. Much like the 1671 auto-da-fé of Lazur Samuelowicz in the wake of his daughter’s blasphemy, Łyszczyński’s abjuration and execution served to affirm Catholic doctrines publicly. Ten years later, in 1699, another nobleman was executed, ostensibly for atheism, though he appears to have been a “judaizer” who embraced Judaism and refused to be reconciled with the Church before his execution, choosing a martyr’s death. He “did not want to confess before the Lord, and had contempt for the priests.” As he was being flayed, he screamed a prayer: “Adonai, the strength of the martyrs, have mercy,” and during torture, he prayed aloud: “Adonai, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, have mercy on me.” Much as in the cases of Kalahora and Łyszczyński, the executor first burned the nobleman’s “godless writings and with them his hand,” after which “he lost his life on the stake.” Like other cases of blasphemy and sacrilege, Łyszczyński’s case was the outcome of a gradual reversal of the original intention of the laws of the 1560s, which were passed to remove religious cases from ecclesiastical courts to protect the accused from an imposition of Catholic doctrines. Trials of religious cases in secular courts, paradoxically, had led to more judicial violence and to an official affirmation of Catholicism. Secular courts engaged in punishment of behavior and beliefs that Catholics considered to be deviant and dangerous, among them sacrilegious confessions, unauthorized touching

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of the Communion wafer, and blasphemy. The magistrates or noble tribunals had to be “willing to kill” to reinforce religious truth, as they were when transgressions by Christians or Jews were most public, demanding the court’s response, but also when the power of the magistrates themselves was challenged. Public executions with symbolic ritualized violence focused on specific body parts, most often “sacrilegious hands” that had touched the host or written sinful words, or the tongue that had spoken them. They sent an unmistakably clear warning to the public against similar crimes, affirming what the Church saw as the one true religion.

4 The Making of a Polish Jerusalem

On Fridays, as late as 1926, and perhaps even up to the eve of World War II, in a small Catholic church on what has been known as “the Jewish street,” a few meters off the main market square in the city of Poznań, the faithful did not sing the prayer Kyrie Eleison, “God Have Mercy, Christ Have Mercy.” Instead, the church followed a liturgy that diverged markedly from the approved official liturgy of the Catholic Mass. The song’s text that replaced the words of Kyrie Eleison told of Jewish desecration of the host in Poznań: O, Jesus, unsurpassed in your goodness, Stabbed by Jews and soaked in blood again Through your new wounds And spilled springs of blood Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy! The hearts of stone from the Jewish street In the house once known as the Świdwińskis’ Sank their knives in You In the Three Hosts, the Eternal God Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy!

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The song recounted the story of three hosts stolen by a Christian woman from a Dominican church in Poznań in 1399. According to the story, she delivered the three hosts to Jews who desecrated them, “stabbing” them with knives. Unable to dispose of them, the Jews took them outside the city and buried them in swamps. The hosts miraculously emerged to reveal themselves to a shepherd boy. The Christian woman and the Jews were punished by the magistrate, and the Church of Corpus Christi was constructed on the site after the miracle. Unlike many other places in Europe, where eucharistic cult sites arose based on stories of host desecration and the legend of a “miraculous host,” in Poznań, no courtroom drama had occurred. The drama in Poznań was larger than a courtroom: The set was the city itself, in its geography and religious makeup after the Reformation. The protagonists were the Carmelite friars of “ancient observance,” who tried to build and, after the Reformation, revive a eucharistic cult around a legend of host desecration by the Jews; their purpose was to promote their church as a pilgrimage destination. As scholars of religion have argued, with “no legend, [there is] no cult”; the Carmelite order needed a story to justify a cult. The first church of the Poznań Carmelite Order of the Strict Observance, or of “ancient observance,” was the medieval Church of Corpus Christi, built in swampy pastures outside the city, where the hosts were said to have risen from the muck. The second was the eighteenth-century Church of the Most Holy Blood of Christ, located just a few houses from the city’s main market square at the edge of the Jewish street (see map 2 following page 156), where the revised prayer commemorated the legend, and where it was said that the Jews had stabbed the wafers, wounding them and making them bleed. But the legend of the desecrated miraculous hosts did not emerge until the late fifteenth century, decades after the Church of Corpus Christi had been built; it was cited to explain the church’s beginnings. The story assumed its near final version at the end of the sixteenth century in 1583, when Tomasz Rerus, a Carmelite monk and apparently a lecturer of Hebrew at the University in Cracow, published a pamphlet entitled The History of the Mysterious Finding of God’s Body: On the Very Site Where Now the Church of Corpus Christi [Stands] in Poznań, with Some Miracles that the Omnipotent Lord God Demonstrates to This Day. Rerus framed the story in the tropes of a tale of Jewish host desecration, typical of similar tales known in other places in Europe. Though it was based on events that could not be documented, the legend persisted, leading to the establishment of the Church of the Most Holy Blood of Christ on “the Jewish street” in Poznań.

t he m a k ing of a polish jerusa l em

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The significance of Poznań’s own host desecration legend came in the aftermath of the Reformation, in its promotion of contested tenets of Catholicism and in its polemic against the Protestants. More tangibly, the legend provided the Carmelites with the means to acquire a more desirable property within the city itself—rather than the remote, swampy area outside the walls— for what would become the Church of the Most Holy Blood of Christ. The Poznań legend reflects the complex relationships between the Carmelites, the city, and other religious orders, and between Jews and Christians. It helped make a new sacred space at a time when dogmas were disputed, Catholic jurisdiction was challenged, and competition was accelerating between Jews and Christians, and among different religious orders. It underlines the centrality of— and the necessity for—imputed evidence of “sacrilege” to affirm the “sacred”; it helped sharpen spatial and religious boundaries and provided the foundation for the creation of a “Polish Jerusalem.”

Carmelites and Their Church of Corpus Christi—The Urban Stage When Poznań was formally settled in 1253, it was carefully planned as an urban space. By the sixteenth century, its layout was impressive, its hub a magnificent market square (see map 2). Inhabited by German- and Polishspeaking Christians and Jews, Armenians, and Scots, as well as by merchants, scholars, and artists from Bohemia, Moravia, and Italy, Poznań retained a cosmopolitan character for centuries. Artisans and poorer commoners shared space and resources with prominent merchants and eminent noble families. Still, diversity had its costs: there were increasing social tensions between the burghers who represented the artisans and urban elites, and the nobles, representing their own interests, over interference and jurisdiction. During the Reformation, religious tensions were added to the mix, exacerbated by an economic crisis in the aftermath of the Swedish wars of the mid-seventeenth century. As a royal city, Poznań had a political and legal system based on the Magdeburg law—the city captain was appointed by the king, and its governance was shared by the magistrate and city council. Each social and religious group was governed by laws of its own that excluded them from city jurisdiction; thus, nobles were technically not subject to the municipal law, nor were Jews or the Catholic clergy. The result was constant legal struggle over jurisdiction and political clout.

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During the Reformation, Poznań became a city sympathetic to Lutheranism and, after 1548, to the Bohemian Brethren—followers of Jan Hus—who settled in Poznań after expulsion from the empire for their beliefs. Around midcentury, Calvinism became a presence there. City authorities, including the courts, were sympathetic to these religious novelties. Therefore, in 1551, when the king ordered Poznań to implement verdicts in religious matters issued by ecclesiastical courts, the city balked. A year later, the king’s appointment of a Catholic, Janusz Kościelecki, as the city captain (starosta) became the first obstacle to the flourishing of the reform communities. In 1555, a royal edict was issued against “heretics” in the city and, with the local bishop’s blessing, Kościelecki hastened to implement it. Some Protestant houses of worship were temporarily closed in the city and the nearest suburbs, reopened only after the intervention of prominent nobles, who protected them and allowed them to continue functioning in their homes. In the 1560s, when the nobility succeeded in passing laws at the Sejm that forbade secular courts to implement verdicts of ecclesiastical courts, Jakub Ostroróg, a prominent nobleman and member of the community of Bohemian Brethren, obtained a royal privilege exempting his community from ecclesiastical and municipal jurisdiction, and, more crucially, also from local taxes. The nobles’ support for the Reformation influenced the city’s gradual shift away from Protestantism toward re-Catholicization, but the reasons were largely political. The city council, which up to that time had been sympathetic to Protestantism, gradually began to see it as an instrument in the nobles’ own expansion of power and as a source of reduced city revenue. Polish historian Maria Danuta Łabędzka-Topolska has maintained that the nobles’ effort to extricate themselves from the city’s jurisdiction and from fiscal obligations enhanced the rift between the nobles and the city. The Protestant communities, viewed by many as supported by prominent city nobles, increasingly “became isolated from the city’s society.” Perhaps for that reason, in 1571, the city allowed Jesuits to establish a residence there, the first religious order to be admitted into the city for centuries. When the Jesuits arrived in Poznań, they were given the small Church of St. Stanislaus near the Mary Magdalene parish church within the city walls. Founded at the turn of the sixteenth century by Bishop Jan Lubrański, the church had also functioned as a hospital. With the Jesuits’ arrival, the clerics of that church were relocated outside the city walls. Within three years, the Jesuits established a college with three hundred students, and by 1596, their number had reached about eight hundred.


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Before the Jesuits came, the map of Catholic religious institutions within the city walls had long been set, with the Church of St. Stanislaus and the parish Church of Mary Magdalene. Near the Jewish street was the Dominican church, established in 1231, and predating the city itself by more than two decades. Decades later, Dominican nuns also received permission to settle in Poznań, with their convent and an adjacent church completed and dedicated to St. Catherine in 1386. Other prominent churches were located outside the city walls. On the right bank of the Warta River, the cathedral and a complex of ecclesiastical episcopal buildings were on the island of Ostrów Tumski, the original settlement before Poznań was established in 1253 on the opposite side of the river. The St. Wojciech church (ecclesia St. Adalberti) on the left bank, which had been founded in 1244, was now outside the walls. And the Church of St. Martin, also predating the city, became the focal point of the St. Martin suburb. Nearby, in the suburbs closer to the river, the convent and church of the Bernardines in Poznań were founded in the fifteenth century by Gabriel of Verona, a companion to John Capistrano, a fiery preacher who was instrumental in inciting a host desecration trial against Jews in the Silesian city of Wrocław in 1453. And, lastly, the Carmelite Church of Corpus Christi was established in the remote swamps in 1401. During the Reformation, the city’s long-flourishing religious institutions of the late medieval period were dramatically weakened, among them the Carmelite Church of Corpus Christi. The religious atmosphere turned turbulent in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, as religious tensions mounted between Jews and Christians, and between Catholics and Protestants. Jesuit reports sent from Poznań to Rome at the time emphasized the sorry state of Catholicism: blasphemies in parish churches with few competent clergy to fight them; “books of heretics in all homes . . . the Bible and Luther’s pastillae can be seen in the windows . . . songs against the Pontiff, the Church, the Religious, and the clergy . . . sung publicly with impunity.” Poznań Jesuits continued to report for decades that Posnania heresibus occupata (Poznań is occupied by heresies). In response, they engaged in disputations with Protestants, tried to convert Jews and “heretics,” and promoted greater religious observance among Catholics. Violence, too, became part of the campaign to re-Catholicize Poznań. Jesuit students, notoriously, attacked Protestants and Jews; their first “tumult” was apologetically recounted in the annual report of 1576 sent to Rome, which told of a Jewish convert to Christianity who had apparently been abducted by Jews as a reason for the eruption of violence. Two decades later, on the evening of the festival of

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Corpus Christi, the Lutheran church was vandalized. In the ensuing investigation, witnesses were asked four questions: “1. Who was the instigator of the tumult? 2. Who inflicted violence and do you know anyone [who participated]? 3. Whether [the witness] knows anyone who stole things. 4. Whether he knows anyone who has those things.” One witness, Paulus Seifex, said that “he was not at home when the tumult began, but seeing the students go in group toward the [Protestant] church [ku zborowi], he followed them toward the house, and having locked up his house, he forbade his servants to leave.” He saw one miller “hacking the door to the church, and a small childish student also hacking.” Despite this violence, however, in the last decade of the sixteenth century Lutherans could still acquire property in Poznań and its suburbs; in 1600, both Lutherans and the Bohemian Brethren had churches (the Bohemian Brethren had two— one Polish, one German). But, in 1617, the city placed restrictions on Protestant public worship “to avoid tumults.” By the following year, riots occurred anyway, and all Protestant churches were demolished by Jesuit students, accompanied by other rabble-rousing crowds. In yet another tumult, the house of a prominent Protestant supporter, Sendziwoj Ostroróg, was destroyed. When King Sigismund III ordered an investigation, the city council objected on the grounds that it had no jurisdiction. Between 1600 and 1618, there were almost annual attacks on Poznań’s Protestants; the surge of Catholic violence against Protestants was perhaps a consequence of the death, in 1593, of the Palatine Stanisław Górka, the last of the notable Protestant family who had been strong protectors of Protestants in Poland. In 1607, the Górka residence, which had served as a Lutheran house of worship, was turned over to Benedictine nuns. The gradual elimination of Protestants from Poznań had opened up new possibilities for Catholic expansion and revival. Between 1591 and 1593, the Jesuit Church of St. Stanislaus was rebuilt and expanded and, in 1610, Jesuits imported from Rome and installed the relics of several saints, among them St. Boniface. Bernardine nuns had begun to build their convent and church just outside the city walls, and Bernardine monks began to restore their somewhat dilapidated church, expanded in 1609 by adding an impressive new chapel. In 1618, “discalced” Carmelites, a stricter rival to those of “ancient observance,” appeared in Poznań and acquired formerly Protestant properties that had belonged to the Bohemian Brethren in the vicinity of the St. Wojciech (St. Adalbertus) church. The Carmelites of “ancient obser-


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vance” of the Church of Corpus Christi— still in that swampy area, relatively remote from the city— sought to join the revival and found a key in a eucharistic cult based on the anti-Jewish legend of host desecration.

Poznań Jews among Christians Not far from the Dominican church— a few steps from the city’s principal market square—were a few streets inhabited by Jews. The fact that Carmelites were claiming the Świdwińska house (which was located on a Jewish street) as a site for a chapel reflected the complicated pattern of JewishChristian coexistence in Poznań, and the gradual rise of anti-Jewish sentiments there. The evidence of that pattern can be traced both in the archives and in the various versions of the Poznań legend that appeared in print from the end of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth. The frequency with which the successive kings issued decrees against inciting anti-Jewish violence suggests that such eruptions happened relatively often. At times, the violence concerned religious matters, as in 1576, when a Jewish man who had converted to Judaism apparently forced his wife and daughters to convert as well, whereupon the wife and daughters were “abducted by Jews,” and Jesuit students rioted. The palatine sided with the Jews, and the king subsequently established a commission to address anti-Jewish riots in Poznań. So, too, the rhetoric of Jewish cruelty and animosity proliferated in the published versions of the legend, and demonization of Jews became increasingly evident in the iconography, and in the religious rhetoric of the legend. By the eighteenth century, the anonymous author of the Precious Deposit of Jesus’ Body and Blood, a Polish version of the Poznań legend, written soon after religious ser vices with a new liturgy had been initiated in the chapel on the Jewish street, compared the 1399 “events” of the three hosts to the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem. In an allusion to Matthew 7:6, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine,” the hosts became the pearls and Jews, pigs. “She threw the dearest pearl,” the anonymous author wrote, “the three most sacred hosts, before the swine, stupid Jews.” As the anti-Jewish rhetoric and imagery were ratchetted up, strikingly, some publications— strongly, and perhaps unwittingly— suggested a more nuanced version of Jewish-Christian relations, implying Jewish generosity and even positive Jewish-Christian coexistence. Franciszek Powsiński, the prior of the Carmelites, alluded in a 1663 book to the generosity of Jews

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toward Christian servants, saying that a Christian woman took a job as a servant to Poznań’s Jews because “she could expect more payment and rewards than [from serving] Christians.” Jews “show humanity in discourse, give hope and comfort along with payment”; though not out of good heart, Powsiński cautioned, but to gain access to the “most sacred host.” The anonymous author of a later version spoke even more strongly: “They did not enter the house of the Christian woman, but enticed her into their house: they did not mention anything about the crime they plotted in their heads, but only asked her if she would accept work as servant. . . . They rewarded poor service generously, helped her in her needs and wants, and offered her more affection. . . . And so they stole into her heart, so much that she began to have more affection for Jews than for Christians. So much they confused her that she began to babble about Jewish virtue surpassing that of the Christians’: Jews are good people, merciful for a poor person, respectful of servants, you don’t ever have such mercy among Christians.”  The writer, troubled by the apparently positive close relations between Jews and Christians, had turned this closeness into an act of animosity veiled in heavily religious and biblically inflected rhetoric. Archival evidence suggests fascinating layers of similarly complicated relations between the city’s Jewish and Christian residents. On the Jewish street, in the northern part of town, adjacent to the Dominican church, most houses were built of wood—not of stone, as in the wealthier and more prestigious parts of the city— and conditions there were often a source of contention between the city and the inhabitants. In 1565, a settlement required Jews to remove “mud” from their streets. The “cleanup” efforts must not have been satisfactory or long lasting, since fifteen years later, King Stefan Batory received a new complaint by Dominicans in Poznań that the area near the church was made dirty with Jews’ houses and workshops. He ordered the palatine to designate a site to which “excrement and dirt” would be moved, and to pave the streets in front of Jewish homes. In 1590, when a huge fire started in “a wooden house of the Jews” and spread to destroy the city, the event, unusually, was recorded on parchment in the city council records. The tone of the record was noticeably hostile; city officials were seeking to expel “the perfidious Jewish people” from the city. Their efforts failed and the Jews were allowed to stay and rebuild their houses, but explicit attempts to limit the number of houses occupied by Jews continued. With a census of Jewish homes in 1619–1620, the demogra-


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phy of the Jewish part of town became public. It revealed that a number of Christians lodged in Jewish homes and, as other sources suggest, there were sometimes casual sexual relations between Jews and Christians. Against this background, with the help of their legend of host desecration, the Carmelites ventured into the Jewish street and began to lay claims to the Świdwińska house to turn it into a chapel.

The Poznań Legend according to Tomasz Rerus (1583) In 1399, around the festival of the Assumption of Mary (August 15), the Carmelite Tomasz Rerus wrote that “the infidel Jews, citizens of the city of Poznań,” had made a pact with “a certain woman” to obtain “the body of our Lord savior in whatever way [and] from whichever church” (fig. 2). The woman went to the Dominican church in Poznań, near the Jewish section of town and, after a Mass, lingered “clandestinely in the church” in order to steal the “sacrament” from “the place where it is stored.” When she tried vigorously to open the ciborium holding the Eucharist, as a result of divine intervention, she fainted and fell to the ground. She rose and tried again, and fainted once more (fig. 3). Finally, “trying for the third time, she came up to the tabernaculum, and having taken [the handle] (not with force, but because Lord God aided [her] for a greater glory of his body, which He was about to demonstrate),” she “opened the door, and, having taken into her filthy and shameful hands [ plugawe a niegodne] a ciborium in which the most sacred Sacrament was, she opened it, and took three small hosts, the shape that is now used for people admitted to Lord’s table.” She then placed the hosts in a kerchief to prevent them from breaking. After replacing the chalicelike ciborium in the tabernacle, the woman hid and waited for the church to reopen, whereupon she left, went immediately to the Jews, and “gave them the three hosts, that is the body of our Lord the Savior. And they, having taken the most glorious Sacrament from her without any decency, placed them in their books [to prevent] breaking” and paid the woman her due. The Jews, Rerus wrote, “having no fear,” took these hosts to the cellar of a stone house on a Jewish street “called Świdwina” to “test whether it was the true body of our Lord the Savior.” When one Jew, “having thrown the hosts out of the books,” struck them with a knife “like a rabid dog,” blood burst out onto his face and could not be wiped off. The other Jews seized their knives and began to stab “the most holy body of our Lord the Savior” (fig. 4).

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As news of the affair spread among the Jews, people began to enter the cellar. When one blind Jewess wanted to know what was happening, another Jewess told her that “our rabbis received the Christian god and they are now testing if this is the true body.” The blind woman “began to think to herself, ‘if you are a real god whom Christians worship, allow me to see with my own eyes,’ ” and miraculously began to see, since “the omnipotent Lord God, having seen her strong faith” granted her wish. She broadcast the miracle to everyone on the street. “The Jewish rabbis,” terrified lest they get in trouble “with the city,” tried to conceal the traces, but the blood now covered their faces, as well as the walls and columns in the cellar, and could not be washed away. As for the three hosts, they tried to “throw them into fire, trample them in mud, [and] throw them into a well, but they could not get rid of these three hosts in any way at all.” On the eve of “the Assumption of Mary, which fell on Friday,” the Jews took the hosts outside of the city “to the place where now the Church of Corpus Christi is” and buried them in the marshes (fig. 5). The following Sunday, the son of a shepherd who was pasturing cattle on city-owned meadows while his father was in church noticed something “like three butterflies flying out three times out of this spot and the cattle kneeling.” When his father returned, the son told him what he had seen, but the shepherd did not believe it until he also noticed the kneeling cattle and three floating hosts. He returned to the city to inform the magistrate (fig. 6), but the magistrate became angry at the frivolous denouncement and imprisoned the shepherd in a city tower. God intervened, and the shepherd left through an open door, returning to the magistrate and saying that “through His power, God led him out of the locked tower” (fig. 7). The magistrate summoned the parish priest and “many other people” to accompany them to the place of the miraculous events. Seeing the three hosts, they summoned the bishop, who came quickly with an entourage of clergy. One of the “pious clerics” took up the “most holy body” in his hands and carried it into the parish church (fig. 8). “But it did not stay there,” Rerus noted. The three pieces of wafer flew back to the swampy pastureland, where they had been buried by the Jews and discovered by the shepherd’s son. Therefore, a chapel had been built on the spot where the hosts were found (fig. 9), followed by a proper church and, with the support of King Władysław Jagiełło, a monastery (fig. 10). Rerus ended his story, saying that “the Almighty Lord God hears and comforts all who are in need and, with true faith, offer themselves [to God] in this place.”


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Rerus followed this tale with a short selection of miracles that abounded because of the hosts, from vague healings to specific illnesses, and revivifications after drowning. In 1493, a woman named Jadwiga, suffering from a long illness, vowed to make a pilgrimage to the Corpus Christi church and was healed immediately. That same year in the town of Kutno, a child who had fallen into water seemed dead for six hours until, like Jadwiga, his parents vowed to visit “the holy place,” and the child returned to life and health. Rerus told of a woman freed from “Satan’s temptations” and another cured of epilepsy, “Saint Valentine’s illness.” Rerus’s booklet was a classic example of “miracle pamphlets” promoting cult and pilgrimage sites that were popular in early modern Europe. The story he told was changed slightly in subsequent versions by other writers; new details were added and iconography developed. A condensed version, engraved in a marble plaque and placed in one of the church’s chapels, became the version of choice used by Church officials in their own reports. In 1609, images in a Latin book by Tomasz Treter became templates for an iconographic representation of the events that persisted through centuries (see figs. 2–12).

The Genealogy of the Poznań Legend Scholars have maintained that the earlier version of the Poznań legend documented by the fifteenth-century Polish chronicler Jan Długosz had been influenced by events in Breslau in 1453, when Jews were tried for desecrating the host, with many executed and others expelled from the city. Some claimed that the final version of the legend was shaped by the first trial against Jews accused of host desecration in Sochaczew in 1556. Tomasz Rerus’s version of the legend, which helped publicize and revive the cult of the Eucharist in Poznań, contains numerous elements of the classic “gentile tale,” as Miri Rubin dubbed it, with a miraculous cure of a blind Jewish girl and unsuccessful efforts by Jews to destroy the hosts (“throwing them in fire, trampling them in mud, throwing them into a well”). A close look at the Poznań tale and its genealogy suggests the strong influence of other tales of miraculous hosts and blood—tales not necessarily antiJewish, but emulating motifs familiar from numerous pilgrimage sites popular in German lands, some located in areas bordering the Poznań region just to the west, underlining the cultural connections between Poland and the

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rest of Europe. The motif of burying the host appears in earlier stories of host miracles: from Güstrow, a town in Macklenburg, where legend has it that Jews buried the host in their synagogue; and in Heiligengrabe in Brandenburg, where a Jew was said to have buried the host under the gallows outside the city. In Pulkau, in Bavaria, a sixteenth-century altar’s depiction of Jews desecrating the host and seeking to dispose of it in a stream outside the city parallels the Poznań story of Jews’ efforts to bury the host in marshes outside Poznań. As Miri Rubin points out, in some European versions of the tale, Jews are said to have tried to throw the hosts into a well— a motif added to the Poznań story in later versions. A motif of floating hosts also can be found in the earlier story of the eucharistic miracle in Erding in 1417, according to which a peasant stole a host from a church on Maundy Thursday, but the host floated in the air and was difficult to catch and hovered only to hide in the earth. A story from 1447 of a miracle in Ettiswil (now Austria) has animals helping to discover hosts abandoned in a field. Most strikingly, the motif of three hosts appeared both in Andechs (in Upper Bavaria) and Wilsnack (in Mark Brandenburg); in neither place, however, did the story have an anti-Jewish motif. The number three is, of course, also the number of the Trinity, and not to be excluded is the fact that during the Catholic Mass, the officiating priest breaks one host into three pieces. At the time, Wilsnack was one of the most prominent pilgrimage sites in Europe, known for its miracles and healing properties, and “surpassed in numbers of pilgrims only by Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela.”  Wilsnack raised anxiety among Catholic leaders, prompting an investigation in 1403, with the participation of the Bohemian theologian turned heretic, Jan Hus. The shrine continued to be contested as late as 1503, some of its critics fearing that “false miracles would encourage Jewish mocking of the host.” Considering Wilsnack’s prominence and proximity to Poznań, it may have been the site that most influenced the Poznań legend and especially its focus on “three miraculous hosts,” with related iconography. Wilsnack’s story of miraculous hosts— spread by word of mouth, by printed broadsheets, and by pilgrim badges—found its way across Europe, including Poland. And the triangular arrangement of the three hosts on the Wilsnack pilgrim badge seems to have been adopted in Poznań— even today it crowns the Church of Corpus Christi in place of a cross (compare figs. 4 and 6 with 13 and 14). Visually, too, the first booklets about the Poznań host reflected traditions of neighboring regions. The title page of Rerus’s booklet resembled title pages


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promoting eucharistic pilgrimage sites in the German lands. It featured a monstrance, ostensibly the one donated by King Władysław Jagiełło, but also a motif of eucharistic veneration that was common to manuscripts and earlier booklets. The most familiar imagery in Western eucharistic representations was of a monstrance held by angels, missing from Rerus’s booklet but included in the later version published by Tomasz Treter (fig. 12). The connection between Poznań’s eucharistic cult and its legend with Wilsnack and other German sites is evident also in the chronological development. Many legends surrounding eucharistic blood cults in German lands are said to describe late medieval “events” behind the founding of a given site; as texts, however, they were seldom composed immediately following the “events” they purport to describe, but usually decades, even centuries later— some as late as the sixteenth century. The site of Doberan near the North Sea, for example, did not receive indulgences in connection with its veneration of the Eucharist until around 1400; local tradition linked the cult to a miracle that was to have taken place in 1210, and the full scope of the local legend became popular only in the sixteenth century. Also, the tale from Heilgengrabe in Mark Brandenburg was a late legend perfected only in the sixteenth century, antedating the claimed miracle to the first half of the fourteenth century. The legend of host desecration behind the blood chapel in Güstrow, built in 1332, was first mentioned decades later in a chronicle from the 1370s, but reached fullness only in a 1510 Latin broadsheet published by Hermann Barckhusen. And in Bavaria, the tale of Deggendorf followed a similar pattern: In 1338, Jews were persecuted in Deggendorf and their houses were looted; in 1360, a church known as the “Deggendorfer Gnad” was erected in the Jewish quarter and became one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Bavaria. Although an inscription within the church linked the violence of 1338 to a claim of host desecration, scholars have found no “connection between the construction of the church and a host miracle.” The legend, popu larized in a poem spread orally and in print, did not develop until the fifteenth century. In Poznań, too, none of the earliest documents on the founding of the Corpus Christi church mentioned host desecration by Jews. There are only vague references to past miracles of the host in papal bulls by Pope Boniface IX, the bull by Innocent VII, and the founding privilege by King Władysław Jagiełło. Pope Boniface IX wrote of “a miracle of the body [that] newly” took place there, and King Jagiełło of “a place where once [olim] the body of

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the Lord was miraculously found.” City records of this period note no trial— a fact that perplexed even the staunchest supporters of the site. In 1779, the deacon of the cathedral in Poznań, Józef Rogaliński, explained that it was “because either [the documents] were lost during a fire, as it is claimed, or stolen, or, as it is commonly regarded, ripped out from all the official documents from all offices by malicious people.” Thus, he had resorted to later chroniclers for evidence of the story’s veracity. Jews are not mentioned at all until a brief note in a late fifteenth-century chronicle by Jan Długosz: “On Friday, August 15th, a certain woman from Poznań, having obtained the most divine sacrament of eucharist in the monastery of the Preaching fathers [the Dominicans], took it out of her mouth and sold it to the Jews living in Poznań. Having been discovered in the meadows of the city of Poznań, it began to perform great acts of kindness to the people in the place where it was found.” According to Długosz, the story involved only one host obtaind during a communion. A few other chroniclers and collections of exempla from the period briefly mention Jews. One, written between 1490 and 1497 in a pidgin Latin and Polish, described the desecration committed in the cellar of a house on a Jewish street. A woman “sold the body of Christ to Jews, and this happened at the [monastery] of the Black Friars in Poznań. The recipients of the venerable sacrament from that woman went to a cellar and there they crucified and stabbed it with a knife, and blood of Christ poured out of this consecrated host. And after that they took it to a pasture land and there it was discovered by a shepherd. And there a church of Corpus Christi was built and the host bleeds there.” The anonymous chronicler connected the Poznań case to an exemplum of Communion distributed by Pope Gregory the Great (perhaps in allusion to Andechs). A woman, evidently unworthy of it, laughed as Gregory approached her. He took the Communion wafer from her and prayed that God correct her from her errors, whereupon the host turned into “red meat” (carnem rubeum). Thus, from the mid-fifteenth century, the Poznań Church of Corpus Christi was gradually refashioned from a eucharistic pilgrimage site to one with an explicit anti-Jewish legend at the center. Until the discovery of moveable type and the subsequent spread of the printing press in the second half of the fifteenth century, pilgrimage sites across Europe had to rely almost solely on word of mouth for publicity. With this new technology, pamphlets and broadsides in Latin and the vernacular—some embellished by woodcuts of miracles, plagues, monstrous births, and other “newsworthy” stories—were published and quickly distributed. Along with


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these new popular publications, a new genre of “pilgrimage pamphlets” began to appear. Pamphlets and broadsheets about the miraculous hosts in Wilsnack (see fig. 14) and about host desecration trials in Passau (1477), Sternberg (1492), and Heiligengrabe reached wider audiences in Europe. Also distributed were broadsheets about Doberan, where a Christian shepherd was said to have been involved in taking the host from a church out into a pasture. Similar pamphlets fabricated the notorious cult of Simonino in Trent, after a 1475 ritual murder trial in which Jews of Trent were accused of killing a boy in order to use his blood. Some stories became so well known that they were recorded in the “more respectable” printed chronicles “of the world.” The Sternberg trial of 1492, for example, together with a reference to Deggendorf, was mentioned in Herman Schedel’s widely popular, if still rather expensive, “World Chronicle” of 1493, known as the “Nuremberg Chronicle.” Schedel also included the story of Simon of Trent, with an iconic woodcut that influenced subsequent representations of ritual murder. In some cases, pamphlets were not published immediately after the events; for example, because there were apparently no printers in Passau, the Passau trial of 1477 was publicized only decades later in broadsides from Nuremberg. But sometimes the printing press was employed without delay in an effort to promote a new pilgrimage site. Six pamphlets were published soon after a 1510 trial and persecution of Jews in Berlin, when many Jews were rounded up and executed. According to the story, a Jew, Solomon of Spandau, had desecrated the host, which miraculously divided itself into three pieces, as if during a mass. Caroline Bynum has argued that “the model provided by the events at Berlin, Brandenburg, Spandau, and Stendal clearly contributed to contemporary efforts to refigure other blood cults in the region, such as Heiligengrabe, as anti-Jewish libels.” This also seems to be the case with Poznań. Access to pamphlets and broadsides publicizing miracles from other sites would not have been difficult in Poland. Poznań, like other Polish cities, had a strong German-speaking population and maintained both trade and legal ties with the neighboring provinces to the west. Through the fifteenth century, Poland’s cities, including Poznań, continued to consult the city of Magdeburg, which had an active printing press, about legal issues pertaining to the “Magdeburg law,” on which they were founded. And, until 1576, when the first printing press was established in Poznań, only books imported from German lands and Cracow were available to Poznań’s readers. Religious literature was dominant, and it is reasonable to argue that among the books

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and pamphlets imported from German lands were a number of those about miraculous stories. Tomasz Rerus seems to have known miracle stories elsewhere, but he wanted to promote a Polish eucharistic cult, which “the Omnipotent Lord God deigned to remember us, Poles, by showing [to us] this venerable miracle.” Miracles in other places only made the one in Poznań more credible, for “this happened not only among us in Poland.” Tomasz Treter, author of the iconic 1609 Latin version of the Poznań legend, also acknowledged that “in other regions there are holy places, whether of the Most Glorious Mother, Virgin Mary, or the Apostles, or Martyrs, or . . . Holy Virgins,” but that, in Poznań, “a miracle of miracles” of the “lifegiving Body of Christ” came about “for the confirmation of the Catholic faith.” By the mid-seventeenth century, this Polonization of the cult was taken a step further. In 1663, Franciszek Powsiński, author of The Precious Deposit of Jesus’ Body and Blood, lauded Poznań as “new Jerusalem”: [Oh how] happy [you are], the City of Poznań, lying in the rubble and debris of the ruined secular happiness, and not having other defense you are surrounded by a wall. Happy you are because you have within yourself a new Jerusalem, you have within yourself the new Calvary, where Christ was crucified for the second time in the Most Holy Sacrament. Happy you are because you have been sanctified with the most precious Innocent Blood of the Pure Lamb. Happy you are and the happiest of all cities, for your glory spreads further than that of Ancient Rome. That is because you have within yourself the most glorious Tomb and soil. In other cities there are bodies of God’s servants, bodies of the Saints, here lies the Lord Himself.

Powsiński conflated the imagery of host desecration with the crucifi xion of Jesus while promoting his order’s own eucharistic cult. The Church of Corpus Christi, according to its prior, became a popular pilgrimage site where “a great multitude of people from different provinces arrive, looking for God’s grace.” The theme of Poznań as Jerusalem became central in promoting the Carmelites’ church; by 1722, the church was billed as a pilgrimage destination equally worthy of a visit to Jesus’s tomb in Jerusalem, because God in his mercy “revealed” Jerusalem here in Poznań to “replace” the Jerusalem in Palestine.

Eucharistic Cult and the Reformation By the time Tomasz Rerus was writing in the 1580s, German pilgrimage sites had been damaged by the Reformation and much contemporary evidence of


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these medieval cults had been destroyed. Since most sites never recovered, much of what survived about them comes from written Protestant attacks on these cults. Wilsnack, for instance, figures prominently in Martin Luther’s diatribes against Catholicism. In 1552, a Protestant minister who burned the relics of the three hosts—putting an end to the cult—was punished modestly by a six-month imprisonment and expulsion from the region. In the Catholic regions of the Holy Roman Empire, some cult places did recover and continued to attract pilgrims. Considering the dramatic decline of the pilgrimage sites in German lands, the Carmelites in Poznań may have taken advantage of the apparent vacuum created, and perhaps that is why they embraced the motif of three hosts, popularized by the Wilsnack pilgrimage site but unknown in earlier versions of the legend about the Corpus Christi church’s foundation. Still, even in Poznań, the Reformation did not leave the city and its Catholic religious orders unscathed, including the Carmelite Church of Corpus Christi. The church’s decline, captured by the “Miracle Book of the Poznań Church of Corpus Christi (1493–1604),” shows a diminution of miracles— only thirteen between 1540 and 1559, and none at all in 1560–1589. Although it is possible that some records of miracles had existed but were destroyed in wars, floods, and fires, the contemporary Tomasz Rerus noted this gap and attributed the decline to the Reformation. In a preface “To the Reader,” Rerus said that old miracles were to be remembered because they were “orchestrated” by God for the benefit of the Church, especially “in these evil times, when people, through their stubbornness and abandon, fall into various errors.” According to Rerus, miracles were God’s reward for people’s faithfulness, but were no longer witnessed because “now our love of God has cooled, and the holy places are no longer held in high respect,” and “in [our] time especially, people do not want to believe” in miracles, regarding them as invented stories. But Rerus assured the readers, saying that “past stories from our ancestors’ and our parents’ times . . . is not a made-up matter.” In 1609, the noted Catholic official and author Tomasz Treter, even more explicit than Rerus about religious uncertainties of the time, used the 1399 legend of host desecration and associated miracles to rebut those who did not accept the Catholic Church’s teachings, the “new evangelical sects.” He specifically mentioned Lutherans and Calvinists in the introduction to his book retelling “the history and miracles of the Most Holy Body of Christ which is in the Poznań Church of the Order of the Carmelite Friars.” The miracles on

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the site, he claimed, were intended to confirm “the truth of the Catholic faith and to confute the blasphemies of the Jews, pagans, and heretics.” Treter’s book, with its detailed list of miracles of healing said to have been caused by the miraculous hosts, proved remarkably influential in future textual and iconographic representations of the legend. Treter included ten copper prints illustrating events from the legend and a foldout picture of the monstrance said to have held the relics (see figs. 2–12). Seven years later, another Catholic writer, Adryan Zarembiusz, in a Polish adaptation of Treter’s book but without the illustrations, stated bluntly that his goal was to convince “Evangelical churches” of the “truth of the most holy sacrament,” providing unimpeachable proofs from most ancient “fathers.” The anti-Jewish story, central in Rerus and Treter, became secondary to Zarembiusz’s anti-Protestant polemic. Zarembiusz cited discord among Protestants as proof of their errors, and stigmatized Luther as an open adulterer and Calvin as an apostate. He called on the Protestants to accept the authority of the Catholic Church “beside which there is no other Mother or Lover of Christ.” He said that the 1399 story could not have been some “monkish or papist rumors,” as adversaries had claimed. After all, Zarembiusz emphasized, the story was supported by King Władysław Jagiełło. Zarembiusz had thrown down a gauntlet: “And therefore Dear Lords Evangelicals [Panowie Ewangelicy] you must acknowledge one of two things: either admit that there is true flesh and blood of Lord Christ (not a symbol or sign of flesh, but its essence) in the holy eucharist, which was stabbed by Jews and from which blood flowed profusely; or you must admit that you accuse the pious King Władysław Jagiełło, who saw all this . . . of being a false witness, [and therefore] of committing Crimen laesae Maiestatis. But I trust that you would not dare to tarnish such a pious [king].” He framed the acceptance or rejection of the eucharistic miracles of 1399— and, by extension, of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation— as a challenge to the authority of the king. Providing seemingly no options for rejection of the Catholic doctrine, Zarembiusz continued: Thus, Dear Lords Evangelicals, you have clear proofs of the true presence of the Lord’s flesh in the eucharist both from the teachings of Lord Christ and holy fathers who agree on this and from the signs and miracles, which you will find in history and which the pious king of blessed memory, Władysław Jagiełło, witnessed. [Therefore] throw away and give up your errors and trust the true church. . . . And conquer your stubborn-


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ness and evil passion [you harbor] against the Roman Church. Break your will so that it would not rule over you but be ruled by reason and guided by the Holy Spirit, and beg our Lord God to show you his grace and bring you back, like misguided sheep, to their sheep-fold the Roman Church.

Zarembiusz used the Poznań tale of host desecration by Jews to corner Polish Protestants into either acknowledging the presence of Jesus’s flesh and blood in the host—thus confirming Catholic doctrine and the charge against Jews— or expressing distrust of the king’s judgment. By opening doors to the possibility of Protestant rejection of charges against Jews and the Catholic doctrines with it, Zarembiusz succeeded in questioning the loyalty of Protestants. This included Protestant nobles, who were then the principal political actors in Poland in matters of the state. He created a framework that later served to present Protestantism as treason and as a threat against the state, eventually eviscerating the Protestant nobles’ political rights and privileges that had been guaranteed by the 1573 constitution.

The Marketplace of the Sacred The legend of “three miraculous hosts” proved versatile. It promoted a pilgrimage site and served as polemic “for the confirmation of the Holy Catholic Faith, for the disgrace of the Jewish and pagan stubbornness, and of the heretical blasphemies.” More practically, it also provided “bread and butter” for the Carmelites of Poznań, whose church housed the relics. Elements in the legend hint at Carmelites’ insecurities about the cult and its undesirable location in the swampy pastureland outside the city, a location that was perhaps disparaged among the Poznanians; as the 1722 Precious Deposit of Jesus’ Body and Blood hinted: “And soon a splendid basilica was built, equal to royal rank and worth, which can be seen today in Poznań on the pasture land in the marshes and mud, which only cattle could reach.” Still, the location was “God’s choice,” the authors of the legend’s multiple versions explained, describing the hosts’ “behavior” of not staying in the parish church where they had been deposited. Treter wrote that although the “sacred deposit” was placed in the parish church, the various religious institutions disagreed as to where the hosts would ultimately remain: whether “in the Cathedral, or another church.” The bishop argued for the cathedral, and the Dominican friars demanded that the hosts be deposited in their church from

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which they had been stolen. The magistrate and townspeople preferred the parish church within the city walls because the hosts had been found on land owned by the city. The “Holy Sacrament,” “which is the symbol of unity and love,” would have nothing to do with those quarrels and left the parish church, flying back to where it was found—the swampy pastureland outside the city, where the Church of Corpus Christi now stood. To emphasize God’s will, Powsiński added that the hosts had been locked up and guarded, an image reminiscent of Jesus’s tomb; but despite that precaution, they disappeared only to reappear in the swamps, “for [the Most Holy Sacrament] wanted to be worshipped in the place where it was left for contempt by infidel Jews.” These assertions aside, prime real estate and wealth were inside city walls. The debates over the placement of the hosts reflect conflicts among different interest groups in the city—the bishop, the Dominicans, and the city— and, more subtly, between the Carmelites, the city, and other religious orders. The legend’s emphasis on the city’s pasturelands as the locus of choice for the church might not be coincidental. Carmelites and the city had a long history of conflicts over pastures and water mills, each side endlessly charging the other with encroachment on their land. The claim that the hosts— or, rather, God— chose the location for the Church of Corpus Christi made it easier to appropriate municipal land for ecclesiastical use. The hosts’ “unwillingness” to remain in any existing church in Poznań seems to allude to the competition over primacy of shrines in Poznań and to the competition for a slice of the limited pie of the “sacred economy.” The conflicts were to become even more acute when the friars began to lay claim to the Świdwińska house on the Jewish street that was to become the Church of the Most Holy Blood. Pilgrimage sites were indeed important sources of revenue, but consideration of “the sacred economy,” or a competition over resources and revenues that cult sites provide, has been neglected in past studies of the Poznań legend. The Carmelites competed against the cults in Germany, taking advantage of their decline, and also against local shrines in Poznań and Poland, especially the popular shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa, already alluded to in Treter’s book. In the late medieval period in German lands, an increasing demand for tangible and visible objects of worship could turn shrines into incredibly profitable enterprises. The Marian shrine of Altötting, for example, received 12,375 pfound pfennig in revenue in 1492 alone, “the sum equivalent of the contemporary value of roughly 4,000 horses or 6,600 cows.” A pilgrimage site had to have objects of worship—relics, legends, or both—to lure pilgrims, but these “sacred commodities” cost money. In the


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fifth century, Augustine had condemned relic trade; three centuries later, Charlemagne sought to control it, but as Christianity spread into Europe, the demand for holy remains increased and fraud and competition for relics between churches and religious orders ensued. The Crusades brought access to new, often fraudulent, relics. Islamic cemeteries were plundered for body parts, which were then sold to Europeans, often by “Arabic middlemen” who offered small skulls as remnants of the innocents slaughtered by Herod. Secular and religious authorities took measures to prevent the spread of fraudulent relics and cults. Even Church authorities understood that some sites might have been promoted for profit. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, concerned with the Church’s credibility, again condemned trafficking in relics not authorized by the pontiff, lest stories be untrue and documents false: The Christian religion is frequently disparaged because certain people put saints’ relics up for sale and display them indiscriminately. In order that it may not be disparaged in the future, we ordain by this present decree that henceforth ancient relics shall not be displayed outside a reliquary or be put up for sale. As for newly discovered relics, let no one presume to venerate them publicly unless they have previously been approved by the authority of the Roman pontiff. Prelates, moreover, should not in future allow those who come to their churches, in order to venerate, to be deceived by lying stories or false documents, as has commonly happened in many places on account of the desire for profit.

In 1299 and then again in 1300, a bull by Pope Boniface VIII, Detestande feritatis, prohibited “dismemberment or boiling of bodies” to separate bones from flesh for ease of transportation to the burial place. Although the demand for relics did not subside and “enthusiasm for saints and supernatural benefactions” grew, access to relics was limited, especially those most venerated: fragments of the cross and remnants of Jesus on earth (foreskin, nails, hairs, blood) or relics of the apostles. As a result, relics of “forgotten” saints were suddenly “rediscovered.”

Miraculous Competition between Poznań and Częstochowa In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in northern Europe, perhaps stemming from the shortage of relics, a dramatic shift occurred—from the veneration of saints and their relics to the veneration of Marian shrines that promoted miracles associated with a representation of the Virgin Mary. In

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Altötting, for example, a cult was triggered by a reported miracle in 1489, when a three-year-old boy who had drowned was revived after his mother laid him on the altar in a chapel devoted to the Virgin Mary. And although Marian shrines required paintings or sculptures, they could be created at any time. More economical were eucharistic cults, which required no purchase of relics or paintings and, like Marian shrines, could be triggered at any moment by “a desecration.” Shrines sometimes competed with each other for pilgrims. In Poland, from the late fifteenth century, the eucharistic cult in Poznań’s Church of Corpus Christi had to compete with the increasingly prominent shrine of Virgin Mary in Częstochowa, and both gradually marginalized the medieval shrine in Cracow with its relics of St. Stanislaus. All three shrines symbolized the Church’s struggles: St. Stanislaus against secular powers and the shrines in Poznań and Częstochowa against non-Catholics (Jews, heretics, and, in the case of Częstochowa to a lesser extent, “schismatics”). The image of Virgin Mary of Częstochowa, with its mysterious scars and unknown origins, fascinated pilgrims for centuries and gave rise to stories of miracles. As with many eucharistic cults, early documentation on the 1382 founding of the monastery on Jasna Góra (or the Bright Mountain), home to the “miraculous” painting, says nothing about it. First accounts of the painting’s arrival appeared in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The 1414 privilege by King Władysław Jagiełło, which granted the monastery a nearby village in exchange for an annual mass for himself, his wife Anna, and his late wife, Queen Jadwiga, mentions only the “monastery of the Most Holy Mary.” Fourteen years later, Pope Martin V granted indulgences “for the happy completion of the construction of the church and monastery of the Virgin Mary on Jasna Góra near the city of Częstochowa,” on account of the “numerous miracles” there. But references to the painting itself did not begin to appear until midcentury, when the bishop of Cracow, Zbigniew Oleśnicki, granted further indulgences of remission of one hundred days to those who visit the monastery to “worship piously the painting of the Most Holy Virgin” on certain holidays. The Polish chronicler Jan Długosz described the painting and the shrine in his Historia Poloniae as “the painting of the most famous and most venerable Virgin and Lady, the Queen of the World, our Mary, painted in the most amazing and rare manner, [as it directs] its most sweet gaze to all sides, from wherever you look.” By the late fifteenth century, the monastery must have been well known as a pilgrimage site, and Długosz acknowledged the shrine’s reputed profitabil-


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ity in describing an attack on the shrine by some nobles who thought that “the monastery . . . in Częstochowa, alias Jasna Góra, possessed great treasures and money on the account that pious people gathering there from all over Poland and neighboring countries, namely Silesia, Moravia, Prussia, and Hungary on feasts devoted to Mary, whose miraculous painting of amazing craftsmanship is there.” The nobles, “not finding treasures,” turned “their sacrilegious hands” to church vessels and sacred objects such as “chalices, crosses, and ornaments.” Miraculously, the perpetrators died soon after “their sacrilegious deed.” More elaborate versions of the Mary of Częstochowa legend developed only in the latter decades of the fifteenth century, retroactively, to justify the existing cult; they began to be popularized from 1514 through print in broadsheets and pamphlets in German, Latin, and Polish. Versions of the legends differed in detail, but they all attributed the painting to, in Jan Długosz’s words, “St. Luke the Evangelist [who] painted it with his own hand.” There is no agreement on how the painting arrived in Poland from Jerusalem; some say through Constantinople at the time of Constantine the Great, others at the time of Charlemagne. Some differences point to the changing religious concerns. In one version, the painting was brought to Poland from Constantinople by a Ruthenian prince, Lew (or Leo) of Halicz, who had received it as a reward for his ser vices to the emperor. After bringing it to the castle in Bełz, a town in eastern Poland, Leo decorated it with silver and gold and venerated it, but he gave access to the painting only to Greek Orthodox Christians, and was thus miraculously punished. Religious polemic is present in other stories of sacrilege and miracles, illustrating shifts in religious competition faced by the Catholic Church over the centuries. The painting’s mysterious scratches on Mary’s face, now thought to be the result of pinning pilgrims’ votive offerings, provided an opportunity for stories of sacrilegious attacks and miraculous interventions. In one story, it was caused by “pagan” Lithuanians and Tartars, who shot an arrow, “wounding it.” The next “sacrilegious wounding” of the painting was said to have been committed by noblemen in the 1430 attack on the monastery described by Długosz. In the later versions, the attackers were “Hussite heretics . . . plundering Christian churches,” who slashed the image twice with a sword and broke it into three pieces, whereupon they were immediately struck to the ground. This “sacrilege” and the resulting “scars” became a central theme celebrated by worshippers and part of the polemic against iconoclastic heretics—first the Hussites and then, in the seventeenth

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century, the Protestants. And here, as with host desecration narratives, the sacrilege was necessary for the manifestation of the sacred. In the anti-Jewish stories of host desecration, as Caroline Bynum has noted, sacrilege was necessary, as “Jews provided evidence against heretics, as well as against themselves.” Jews were seen “to be useful for making manifest a blood that excites devotion, precipitates pilgrimage, and defends the faith against unbelievers.” In Częstochowa, too, the iconoclastic and sacrilegious challenge to the “miraculous painting,” albeit not from Jews, was necessary to ascertain the power of the Virgin Mary and this image. In Częstochowa, as in Poznań, a legend was necessary but not sufficient for a shrine to become a successful pilgrimage site— an assuring divine intervention was needed as well. What attracted people to pilgrimage sites were indulgences, miracles, or both. Since stories of miraculous interventions circulated about other European shrines and those in Poland—first about the St. Stanislaus shrine in Cracow and then about the “miraculous hosts” in Poznań— stories from Częstochowa also needed to enumerate the Virgin Mary’s wide range of interventions, from helping the petitioners to punishing the irreverent and disobedient. Mary’s interventions included healing from epilepsy, from sores, or from venereal diseases— even resurrections, like that of the family of Marcin Lubliniec, a butcher whose elder son, wanting to imitate his father’s work, had slaughtered his younger brother. Realizing what he had done, the boy hid himself in a stove. When his mother returned home and lit the fire in the stove, she discovered her son there and pulled him from the flames, but he was already dead. She then found her younger son slaughtered in his crib, and wailing, summoned her husband. The husband killed her in fury; then, devastated by the tragedy, he pleaded with Mary and took the three bodies to Częstochowa, where all of the dead returned to life. Other miracles told of the reviving of drowned children, of stillborn infants, or even of a young mother accused of infanticide. One woman was punished for not following a vow to visit the shrine, and another for vanity and lewdness in the presence of the “miraculous painting.” The “miracle books” from Częstochowa and Poznań reflect competition between the two shrines, also signaled by Treter. In both the Latin miracle book about Mary of Częstochowa and its Polish versions, a story is told of Nicolas from Sochaczew, a priest suffering from leprosy, who first traveled to the Corpus Christi church in Poznań, but there had a dream instructing him to go instead to Mary’s shrine in Częstochowa. He did, and after pleading


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with the Virgin Mary, he was cured immediately. The booklets about the miraculous hosts in Poznań published by Rerus and Treter also note Mary’s interventions in Częstochowa, but at the same time delicately make it known that the miraculous hosts at Poznań’s Corpus Christi church were more efficacious than the “miraculous” painting of the Virgin in Częstochowa. So, for example, Rerus tells of a child in Częstochowa who drowned in 1493; his parents “offered this child to the church of Virgin Mary in the said Częstochowa, not receiving any comfort. Perhaps because God’s Son wanted to be worshipped more than his Mother, so that that place [Częstochowa] might be worshipped not solely on account of God’s Mother but together with the Son.” As if fearing that his statement may have been too strong, Rerus added that the pleading of the parents in Częstochowa may have been ineffective because they did not understand the importance of the holy site. Then he reverted to the original thought: “And so the child’s parents, seeing that their child did not receive any help, but having strong faith, vowed to bring him to this place [Poznań] sanctified by the true presence of Lord God. And when they did so, the child, who had been without breath for three days, with God’s help, returned to life.” Treter reported the same case, noting that the reason for the inefficacy of the parents’ pleading might have been the Most Holy Virgin’s wish to share the worship with her son. A manuscript version of the story from about 1602, sent to the general of the Carmelite order in Rome, mentioned the frustration and desperation of the parents at the futility of their pleadings with Virgin Mary, and the eventual “return to life and restitution of pristine health” after their offering to Poznań’s Church of Corpus Christi. The theological hierarchy became obvious—the Son, in real presence, should be worshipped more than his mother or his mother’s image. In another case noted by Treter, a man in Poznań, afflicted with an illness, sent a votive offering to “the Most Blessed Virgin of Częstochowa” with no results. But when he made an offering in the Church of Corpus Christi, he was promptly healed. Such apparent criticism of the cult of Mary by these Carmelite authors was surprising since, after all, the Carmelites were an order specifically devoted to Mary the Virgin, as the full name of the order suggests: Ordo fratrum Beatæ Virginis Mariæ de monte Carmelo (the Order of Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel). But the concerns about the viability of the cult site as a pilgrimage destination— and, thereby, also concerns about the order’s “bread and butter”—might have been stronger.

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Mary of Częstochowa was not the only site competing with Poznań; Cracow, with its relics of St. Stanislaus, was the other. Treter noted the case of a woman from Cracow who suffered from epilepsy. She devotedly visited the relics but to no avail, until, in a nightly vision (in visione nocturna), she saw the face of a man telling her “that he could not free her from her affliction, unless she sent a votum (a votive offering) to the church of Corpus Christi in Poznań.” She did so and was healed. It is unclear if the “man” in the dream was St. Stanislaus or Jesus himself. If that was not enough, Treter brought up a case from 1535 in which, after a three-year-old girl became gravely ill, her mother went on a pilgrimage “to the sacred places: Jasna Góra in Częstochowa, Holy Cross [in Małopolska], and to the tomb of St. Stanislaus in Cracow.” None brought her consolation, but after she undertook a pilgrimage to the Corpus Christi church, her daughter was restored to health. The list of miracles reproduced by Tomasz Treter in his 1609 pamphlet is much longer than the list published in connection with Mary of Częstochowa, though the miracle books preserved in Jasna Góra record thousands of apparently effective miracles through the seventeenth century. Seeking to emphasize the importance and efficacy of Poznań’s “miraculous hosts” over the Częstochowa shrine, Treter underlined the Carmelite church’s fame, not only in Poland, but beyond—in the German Saxony, in Prussia, and even in Rome. In the economy of worship, the stories of healing included hints of what to do: visit the pilgrimage site, send a votive offering, or order a mass. Treter’s book reads as a how-to guidebook to the efficacy of prayers. Rerus and Treter also may have been vying with local shrines, some devoted to Mary the Virgin and some to Jesus as the Man of Sorrow. The fraternity of the rosary in the Dominican church in Poznań centered around a painting of Mary the Virgin. In fact, this is why the “desecration” in Poznań was said to have taken place in August—an odd time, since the typical host desecration story placed the act around Easter, when Communion was customarily given. August 15 was the day on which the Dominicans in Poznań annually led a splendid procession in honor of the Virgin Mary. Even the rise of the shrine of Corpus Christi may have been in competition with the Dominicans and the Carmelites, as an order devoted to Mary may have thought the Dominicans had usurped “their Lady,” leaving them with little to promote. What was to be higher than Mary in the theological hierarchy, if not “the body of the Lord” himself?


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But the Son was worshipped by a number of female orders in Poznań; the Dominican nuns promoted a cult of the Man of Sorrow from the midfifteenth century. And, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Benedictine nuns began to promote a cult of Christ the Savior with a life-size statue of Jesus at its center. Thus, the rise of Poznań’s cult of the miraculous hosts in the fifteenth century and its revival in the following two centuries were part both of a broader process of devotional revitalization across late medieval Europe and of a local competition for resources in the marketplace of “the sacred.”

The Theater of the Eucharistic Blood—Reviving the Cult in Poznań In 1620, the Carmelite friars of Poznań wrote to Rome requesting a renewal of indulgences for their Church of Corpus Christi, soon to expire. In light of the expansion of other religious orders within the city, the loss of any incentive to visit the Church of Corpus Christi would have been devastating. Something needed to happen to remind everyone about the church and its miraculous hosts. The pamphlets of some years earlier may not have been enough. Around the time of the August 15 festival of the Assumption of Mary and the annual procession led by the Dominican friars, there was a sensational discovery in the cellar of the stone house, “known in the past as Świdwoska,” on the Jewish street near the outlet to the market square, within steps from the Dominican church. A table, split into three parts, was said to be found in the cellar rubble, cemented into a column. It was a striking parallel to the “sacrilegious defacing” of the painting of Mary the Virgin of Częstochowa, which was said to have been painted on a table, and later vandalized and broken into three pieces. News of the discovery spread quickly. People said that this was the actual table on which Jews had desecrated the hosts in 1399. Perhaps intending to steal the wind from the annual procession on the feast of the Assumption of Mary, the Carmelites promptly arranged for a procession of their own on Sunday, August 30. That afternoon, Jan Trach Glinsky, bishop suffragan of Gniezno and archdeacon of Poznań, led a splendid procession around the city’s market square, with “ornate houses” and “prepared altars,” in the presence of “all clergy and people.” The city troops stood by with “arms and flags” and other celebratory “signs and instruments.” As songs were sung, the bishop, “with his own hands,” raised up the table

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excavated from the Świdwińska house and carried it together with the “venerable sacrament” to the Church of Corpus Christi outside the city and, in the presence of the city clergy, senate, and “all people,” he deposited it on the altar. The spectacle was reported to the general of the Carmelite friars and later made its way into books about Poznań’s eucharistic shrine. Still, the idea of “retrieving” a table that had been hidden in the cellar of the house may not have come from the Carmelites. In 1591, a broadsheet circulated in Europe reporting miraculous events in Pressburg (today’s Bratislava); centuries after the accusations that Jews had desecrated a host in Pressburg, a table was found and reclaimed from the ruins of the house. A chapel was built on the spot. The parallels between the two stories are striking; the story of Pressburg may well have inspired the Carmelites in Poznań. The spectacle that Sunday eventually allowed the Carmelites to extend their presence from the swampy periphery of the city into the sought-after center. In October, Matheus Barthodziey, prior of the Carmelite monastery, and Blasius Hoycius, lecturer of theology and governor of the students in the convent, appeared before the city council to record an account of the procession in the city council’s official minutes. Notably, it was registered in the council’s parchment book, the very book that contained bylaws and the register of the elections to the council. Only legally binding documents were inscribed in city council and court records, and few were inscribed in the parchment council book itself. The document the Carmelites “ordered” inscribed, ostensibly, had no legal meaning. It was not a contract of property transfer, an agreement involving the city political system, or an actionable deed or decision, but simply the record of a procession. To the Carmelites, however, it was of utmost importance and worth what must have been a substantial cost. In hindsight, it is clear that the Carmelites must have been preparing to acquire rights to the house where “the table was found,” not necessarily as a revenue-producing property, but as a site for their future church. The procession and its formal inscription in the official city records were the beginning of a process to sacralize the property and the site, turning them into what the seventeenth-century writer Franciszek Powsiński, prior of the Corpus Christi church, would call “the new Jerusalem.”

Carmelites and the City in Court It took the Carmelites more than eighty years to gain possession of the house and a sanction from Church authorities to open a chapel there. The city had


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been reluctant to remove more property from its tax rolls by letting it fall into the hands of Church institutions, which were customarily exempt from city taxes. The revenues from property taxes had been declining as the number of houses subject to them diminished, and the city fought to force anyone owning property in the city to pay these taxes. In 1540, the city council already had complained to King Sigismund I against Catholic clergy’s ownership of houses or their publicly visible parts (wykusze) within the city walls. In response, the king issued a letter to the bishop of Poznań reminding him that the clergy, like others, were obliged to pay property taxes. (The nobles, too, were evading paying their share.) In 1555, King Sigismund August amended the order to include any property in the city’s suburbs, with owners required to pay taxes to the benefit of the city. The city feared that further transfers of property to the Catholic Church would effectively remove that property from the city’s shrinking tax base: The Benedictine nuns had taken possession of the Górka palace, and the Franciscans, with support from the bishop, had begun to acquire property in the city through donations and purchases for a church and a monastery. Apparently envious of the Franciscans, the Bernardines, with a residence just outside city walls, “regarded the [Franciscan] monastery as a duplication of their pastoral activity” and began to thwart the Franciscans’ efforts. They organized other religious orders, and together they approached the palatine to prevent the building of the monastery. Their efforts bore fruit and, at least for a time, the Franciscans were not allowed to settle within city walls. The Carmelites’ attempts to take possession of the Świdwińska house coincided with this competitive flurry. But the opposition to the Franciscans could not have been helpful to the Carmelites, and for decades the Carmelite friars were unsuccessful in taking possession of the Świdwińska house. Complicating matters, no doubt, was the fact that the house’s ownership was shared among several noblemen—including Łukasz of Bnin Opaliński, Jan of Leszno Leszczyński, Andrzej Karol Grudziński, and Sigismund Grudziński— who would have rented their parts to tenants. Although the Carmelites succeeded in convincing one of the owners to cede his part to them within eight years after the memorable procession, two decades later in 1648, the house was still home to a Jewish store; it took another decade to gain the remaining parts. Months before they had acquired all parts of the house, the friars urgently approached the king for a privilege to take possession of the house, with permission to open a chapel. In 1659, they received the first royal nod, a permission for possession and use of the house for spiritual purposes to

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compensate for the “contempt and disgrace” that the “sacrosanct Eucharist” had suffered from the “blasphemies” of the Swedes, the Lutheran invaders. The Lutheran Swedes had occupied Poznań and devastated the city and its suburbs, including the Church of Corpus Christi, offending the faithful and further endangering the pilgrimage site. In 1659, the Carmelites’ sense of urgency had been bolstered by the city’s efforts to turn the apparently unused Świdwińska house into a hospital to replace others destroyed during the Swedish war. The city had at its disposal a privilege— first granted by King Sigismund August in 1556 and confirmed in 1622 by King Sigismund III— stating that all empty lots and abandoned houses whose owners were unwilling to repair them would become city property. It is unclear whether the city used this privilege to thwart Carmelite efforts to take possession of the house (who by then had owned two parts) or whether the Carmelites, aware of the city’s plan, had accelerated the transfer of the house into their hands. In May 1659, three months before acquiring rights to the whole house, the Carmelites filed a complaint against the city council’s efforts, and two months later, on July 19, just four days after the Carmelites took possession of one more section of the house, the king appointed a special commission to examine the mutual claims to find a solution. The committee was instructed to find out, among other things, how long “the disputed house” had been abandoned, whether portions of the house were uninhabited, and whether the city proclamation about its right to abandoned houses had been published. The committee’s progress, if any, was not recorded. Seventeen years later, in 1676, the Carmelites again appealed to King Jan Sobieski for confirmation of the 1659 decree by King Jan Kazimierz, allowing them to use the house for “spiritual purposes.” The matter was not resolved until 1702, when Bishop Nicolas Święcicki granted the Carmelites an ecclesiastical permission to establish a chapel in the Świdwińska house, even though they had owned it since 1659. But even this was not the end of the saga. Less than two weeks after the bishop’s permission, the city council responded with a protest signed by more than thirty councilmen against the episcopal decree, citing the city’s financial difficulties and the ruin that the “great crowding” of religious orders within the city had brought. Their protest was to no avail. The first religious ser vices in the Świdwińska house were held two years later, during another war. Yet, even then, the legal battle persisted between the city and the Carmelites. It took almost three more


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decades for the city to concede defeat, while saving face—in 1732, the city received 797 złotys from the friars in exchange for a guarantee that “it will not lay any claims to the above mentioned chapel.” This was not a small sum, considering that in 1729, for example, three men hired for two days of work to scythe grass on the Dominican monastery’s meadows were paid a total of six złotys; a monastery cook’s annual salary was forty-eight złotys, and a butcher was paid one złoty for slaughtering a cow. Still, the city’s resistance to Carmelites’ overtures was not simply about allowing more churches within its wall. The Franciscans, who had wanted to establish a church in the city, first had been forced to leave it for the nearby suburbs after the Bernardines’ protests, but managed to appease city authorities and, in 1664, put a cross at the spot where construction began a year later. But with the Carmelites, at issue was trust between the city and the order, which had been damaged at least from the second half of the sixteenth century by quarrels over access to pastureland, land boundaries, water mills, and rents, as well as by questions of autonomy and jurisdiction. Many times, the Carmelites had charged the city with building dams that led to flooding of their church and monastery. In 1598, for example, they accused the city’s mill of building dikes that diverted water from a mill of their own. A year later, the city accused the friars of appropriating two swaths of city-owned land, and the Carmelites turned to the king for help, a threat to the city authorities striving to protect their autonomy. In response, the king set up a commission to examine the claims, which sent in a report in 1600, examining all privileges and land grants to the city and to the friars and establishing the proper jurisdiction for matters of conflict between them. The commission ordered the city to repair the dam that flooded the monastery, and on the matter of the land appropriation, it established a boundary between meadows; both verdicts were beneficial to the Carmelites, who ordered a copy to be recorded on parchment. In 1623, the city accused the Carmelites of moving landmarks to usurp more city land, and the Carmelites charged the city with stealing hay from their meadows. In an inspection to determine property lines, a fight erupted between city officials and the friars, and officials called on peasants working nearby for help. They came with scythes and wielded them against the friars. Three years later, another agreement was reached: the Carmelites ceded their Topolnik mill to the city in exchange for the annual transfer to the monastery of eight małdrats—the equivalent of twenty-four barrels of grain, eight

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times over a year. In 1631, the Carmelites complained that the city had failed to deliver the promised grain and had continued to flood their monastery and nearby meadows. In 1632, the king fined the city one thousand grzywnas to be paid to the Carmelites (one grzywna was approximately the equivalent in coins of half a pound of silver). Six years later, the case arrived at the Sejm, and from there it was moved on to the royal court. Nor were the Carmelites free of blame; they had failed to pay their dues in taxes and rents to the city. The issues between the sides were not resolved until the next century, when King August II issued a decree in 1732 that confi rmed the arrangement for the Topolnik mill and required the Carmelites to pay a bulk fee of 797 złotys to the city in exchange for the city’s forfeiture of any claims to the Świdwińska house. The city, thus, effectively relinquished any jurisdiction over the disputed property, and the way was now clear for the chapel.

The “Dominican Brothers Cannot Allege Diminution of Alms” Soon after Bishop Święcicki approved the creation of the chapel in the Świdwińska house, the city’s Dominicans and Franciscans joined to oppose the decree, much as the city council had done that year. The Dominican friars of Poznań saw the new chapel as a sneaky way to establish a new monastery. This, they argued, would go against privileges granted to them by Pope Clement IV and others that prohibited the founding of a new monastery within 140 fathoms (approximately 240 meters) of their own church. They appealed to Rome to the Sacred Congregation of the Council of Trent, established in 1564 to implement the council’s reforms, opposing the chapel and claiming that the Carmelites, in fact, “had conceal[ed] building” a monastery in the Świdwińska house. The Carmelites responded that the allegations were false, and that “this house was located in the region of the parochial church and more generally in the vicinity of other monasteries.” They assured the Sacred Congregation that they wanted only to celebrate a daily mass in that house, nothing more. Indeed, on the day Bishop Święcicki finally granted his approval, the Carmelites had been forced to sign an agreement eschewing any intent to build a monastery or to acquire more houses, and stating that they sought only to erect “a chapel in this house known as Świdwińska . . . for the honor of God and the memory of the Passion of the


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Lord repeated again in the Eucharist of three hosts attacked by infidel Jews with knives and their sacrilegious hands.” The Sacred Congregation ordered a report from the bishop that indicated whether the house was indeed situated in the parish church’s ward and “was close to [other] monasteries and convents present in the city of Poznań.” A year later, in November 1703, Bishop Święcicki dispatched his report. After retelling the legend and acknowledging the “contention among the clergy [spirituales] concerning the church in which the hosts should be placed,” he noted that the house had been owned by the Carmelites, with all its shares having been ceded or donated to them. He had granted the Carmelites permission to “erect and construct a chapel in this house,” with a door opening to the public road and a small bell on its top to “call people” for daily masses, but “with a prohibition that the Carmelite brothers may not, under penalty, build a convent or monastery in this house, or organize processions with the Most Holy Sacrament.” To the Sacred Congregation’s first question, Bishop Święcicki responded: “The house is not situated at all in the ward of the parish church, whereas Poznań’s parish church is situated beyond all streets and outside of the Market square, and near the walls of the city of Poznań, fortifying the very city, the house . . . is located on the Jewish street, and other streets and public roads intersperse both places, they are called: Grand street, the Market Square, Water street, St. Stanislaus Street, and one other that goes toward the parish church, and the distance between them is at least four hundred steps.” Since there was only one parish church within the city walls, its ward should have covered the entire city, but the bishop argued that distance and the fact that the house was on “the Jewish street” excluded it from the parish’s jurisdiction. If distance was a factor, the Dominican church and the convent of the Dominican nuns were much closer. That was not clear from the report. In reference to the second question, the bishop explained that “there were three monasteries in the city of Poznań.” He listed four, adding one just outside city walls: “First, the Order of the Preaching Brothers of St. Dominic, who are the authors of the questions and of the opposition . . . the second, monastery, or college, of the Jesuit Fathers, they are not in opposition,” and the third, “the monastery the minor Franciscan brothers,” near the castle of Poznań, by the city walls, about “three hundred steps” from the house in question, with streets interspersed between the two, “having no contiguity with that house in which the Most Sacred Hosts were stabbed.” The fourth was the church and

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monastery of the Bernardines, not within the city “but in the suburb, or an island around which the Warta river flows,” and for that reason, not to be part of the dispute. The Dominican nuns were not mentioned at all since they could not perform pastoral duties and thus were not in direct competition with the other churches and monasteries. There was something odd about the bishop’s description of the Dominican monastery’s location as being “sufficiently remote” from the house, “at least four hundred steps”—the same distance as the parish church, and one hundred more than the Franciscan church near the castle. This was not quite true. The parish Church of Mary Magdalene was on the other side of the town by the city walls, and past the market square, itself 140 meters long (see map 2). The Franciscan church was equally remote; in contrast, the Dominican church was “adjacent to the Jewish street” itself. Franciszek Powsiński, the prior of the Carmelites, described it in his 1663 book as being mere steps away from the Świdwińska house, as the Dominicans themselves affirmed in their complaints about Jews polluting their neighborhood. Anyone who had visited the city would know that the bishop’s description was not quite right. So was the bishop lying? Bishop Święcicki wrote: “This house is located on the Jewish street, the monastery of the Dominicans is indeed beyond all streets, outside the town, albeit within the walls of the city. The monastery is certainly distant from the above mentioned house at least four hundred steps, through the Grand street and through Shoemakers’ Street.” In absolute terms, the bishop had not told the truth, though his description of the route to be taken from the house to the Dominican church may have made it “sufficiently remote.” He had proposed a roundabout way that wholly bypassed the Jewish area, a “Christian route” linking the planned chapel and the Dominican church. He was, in effect, demarcating the city’s Christian boundaries and locating the Dominicans “outside of the town.” Turning the house into a chapel would, in turn, expand the boundaries of “the Christian town.” The bishop, who was supportive of the Carmelites, seems to have understood that the Dominicans’ opposition was not about the distance but about competition for a piece of the “sacred economic” pie. In his wrap-up, he concluded: “Preaching Dominican Brothers cannot allege diminution of alms, they do not go door to door and ask for alms, since they have most abundant gifts and own country houses and other real estate [bona immobilia] bringing them rents. I estimate that they [Dominicans] stir opposition on the account that in 1399 the most sacred hosts stolen from their church were entrusted not


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to the custody of the Preaching Brothers but to Carmelites of Strict Observance, and [having been] deposited and placed in the [Carmelites’] church, they reveal miracles to this day.” The bishop emphasized that Dominicans would not forfeit the alms coming from funerals, because funerals were not permitted in the new chapel, “only celebration of masses, as is gathered in the sworn obligation of the Carmelite Brothers and my consent.” For the Dominicans, the competition may have been about revenue, and fear that the Carmelites would encroach on their territory and lead eucharistic processions like the one in 1620, in competition with the Dominicans’ own annual processions. For the bishop, the erection of the chapel had religious significance—to “commemorate the Passion of Jesus Christ our Lord and of the spilling of the blood from the Most Sacred Body under the species of bread.” He acknowledged that he had granted the Carmelites permission to open the chapel in order to affirm and “aid” the cult; he referred to “heretics in the city of Poznań and in its vicinity, both in the Kingdom and outside, namely in Silesia, Pomerania, the Mark Brandenburg,” who seek out occasions to deny the “existence of miracles, which the omnipotent God manifests in the Orthodox Roman Catholic Church.” The chapel, like the legend earlier, served to fulfill multiple goals: promotion of Catholic doctrine, geographic expansion and sacralization of space, and gains within the sacred economy. Despite the post1702 protests, the Carmelites began to hold masses at the site in 1704. The first celebrations and new liturgy were commemorated in the 1722 book retelling the story of the three miraculous hosts in “Polish Jerusalem.”

Poznań: The “New Jerusalem” The tangled story of the eucharistic cult in Poznań embodies and reveals connections between Poland and the rest of Europe, as well as the complexities of religious politics of the early modern period, especially the politics of “sacred economy.” It underscores, too, the importance of local context: the politics; the cultural, demographic, and religious makeup of the city; and the city’s geography. Struggles over jurisdiction, competition between the city and the nobles, and competition between various religious orders over local resources were also part of the story, as was the increasing anti-Jewish sentiment— at least among some residents of the city, and certainly among religious and political leaders, as suggested by the rhetoric of the legend and the bishop’s reports to Rome.

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The Carmelites apparently tried to force Jews to participate in their processions during Corpus Christi. In 1686, Jews of Poland appealed to the general of the Carmelite order in Rome, Ferdinand Partaglia, asking for help against the Polish Carmelites’ promotion of anti-Jewish tales that Jews “mix in Christian blood into their unleavened paschal bread” and that they “misuse the sacrament of the most sacred Eucharist” in their celebrations (solemnitas). The general admonished Polish Carmelites and appealed to the provincial to prevent such behavior among both the religious and the faithful. But it was only after the Jews protested all the way to the Crown Tribunal in Piotrków that an agreement was reached between the Carmelites and the Jews, according to which the Jews would pay a fee to the friars, freeing themselves from participation in processions. For the Carmelites, the legend of the three hosts had a practical significance beyond the revenue it helped produce from pilgrimages and votive offerings. The long fight over the Świdwińska house brought them access to the much-desired location within the city walls. The episcopal see also was content since, after all, the new chapel extended the boundary of “Christian Poznań.” Christianizing, or sacralizing, the city was a significant part of the story behind the legend of “three miraculous hosts.” By 1722, Carmelites had begun to evoke explicit biblical imagery of the passion of Christ and of Jerusalem. Jews of Poznań became the tormenters of Christ in Jerusalem, or worse than that: “The Poznań Synagogue was fiercer than that of Jerusalem, for in Jerusalem the body of Jesus was laid in a new stone tomb, in Poznań it was put into the dirt, into the muck; there, with stone, here, with muck, he was covered; there, a dead body was buried, here, a living one. Dear Reader, I want to take you to Polish Jerusalem.” The table had become the cross; the column in the cellar of the Świdwińska house had become the pillory by which Jesus was flogged; and the pastureland outside of Poznań, the Holy Sepulchre. Poznań was now the “Polish Jerusalem.” Thanks to the legend of three hosts “desecrated by the sacrilegious hands of Jews,” Poznań became sacralized. Paradoxically, the desecration was “good fortune, when in the place of Palestinian Jerusalem, God’s goodness built for us another Jerusalem.” A story of sacrilege had become an instrument of redrawing and sharpening the physical and cultural religious boundaries of this early modern city, which persisted throughout the twentieth century. The chapel of the Most Holy Blood became not only the site of eucharistic worship but also the site


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of an anti-Jewish cult, with an explicitly anti-Jewish liturgy that replaced the traditional Catholic Mass— all this at the edge of Jewish space. It could not help but sharpen animosity and a sense of religious differences. Jews became excised from the “Christian” city without technically leaving it. In the competition between the sacred and profane, it was the Jews who became “profane” and the city “sacred.”

5 Protestant Heresy and Charges against Jews

In the spring of 1556, Dorota Łazęcka, a Christian woman who was a servant in a Jewish household in the small Polish town of Sochaczew, was accused of stealing the consecrated wafer during the Easter season and delivering it to Jews. She was promptly burned at the stake. The Jews were charged with desecration of the host by “stabbing and torturing” it and they too were sentenced to death by burning. It was the first documented trial for host desecration in Poland. The trial illuminates religious and political tensions in Poland at the time of a conflict that the Catholic Church was fighting on two fronts—one, against Protestant “heresy,” especially its denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and a political front concerning jurisdiction of ecclesiastical and secular courts over religious doctrine. The trial had reverberations in Catholic and Protestant circles across Poland and across Europe as a whole, reflected in contemporary Polish and European Catholic-Protestant polemic, as well as in a statute in the Catholic provincial synod of Łowicz enacted that same year. The synod warned against careless “custody” of the Holy Sacrament and other sacramental substances (such as sacramental oils and baptismal water) that would lead “sinful persons” (nephariis hominibus) to commit sacrilege and other crimes. Parish

protesta nt her esy a nd ch a rges ag a inst jews

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priests were instructed to pay attention to those who attended the church and took Communion, and were urged to “know the faces of their sheep” in order to prevent administration of Communion to unknown persons who may not have confessed properly, or worse, who may have intended to steal the wafer. The Sochaczew trial took place at a volatile moment in European history, less than a year after the Diet of Augsburg had accepted the Confessio Augustana and de facto recognized Lutheranism. Cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa had been elected Pope Paul IV in May 1555; he was to become one of the most hated popes in history for his role in the Roman inquisition, his fierce campaign against heretics, and for the establishment of the Roman ghetto for Jews. Perhaps not incidentally, at the heart of it all was the papal nuncio to Poland, Luigi Lippomano, bishop of Verona, papal legate to the Council of Trent, and strong ally and supporter of the pope’s “CounterReformation” policies. For Lippomano, the trial in Sochaczew was a godsend, allowing him to focus on his prime goals: affirming Catholic doctrines and reasserting ecclesiastical autonomy and jurisdiction. But it was also because of Lippomano that the trial in that small Polish town entered the European stage.

Luigi Lippomano, Fighter against Heresy By the time Luigi Lippomano arrived in Poland in 1555 at the age of fiftynine, he was an influential church official and a close confidante of Pope Paul IV, but his road to this position had been difficult. Despite his zeal and devotion to the Catholic Church and its doctrines, despite the connections that he and his family had—his father was a prominent Venetian—he was never promoted to a rank higher than bishop and papal legate because of his “illegitimate birth” (defectu natalium). His father, Bartolo Lippomano, apparently had a liaison with his servant, Martha. Bartolo had made certain that his son would be provided for, stipulating in his last will that a brother, Nicolò, should help Luigi find an ecclesiastical position that “would render 100 ducats per annum.”  Until that time, Bartolo had provided an allowance for Luigi’s upkeep. Luigi graduated with a doctorate from the nearby University of Padua and joined the clergy there. Family connections brought him to the papal court in Rome where, in 1535, he became a personal servant to Pope Paul III; three years later, he was elevated to the position of coadjutor to his ailing cousin, the bishop of Bergamo, Pietro Lippomano. Luigi’s consecration

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was led by Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV, and a close relationship developed between the two, a connection that would be symbolically memorialized in their deaths. Luigi Lippomano died in Rome on August 15, 1559, and four days later, on August 19, “his benefactor” Pope Paul IV died, it was said, “out of pain for the death of his secretary, Luigi Lippomano.” Soon after his elevation to coadjutor, Lippomano was promoted to the largely ceremonial position of bishop of Modone nella Morea (a small town on the Peloponnese under Venetian rule), and seven years later, in 1542, to the post of the papal nuncio to Portugal, his mission to convince that kingdom to participate in a general council that was soon to be convened. With his mission successful, he was promoted again in 1544 to the more prestigious bishopric of Bergamo, and a year later, he began to play a major role at the newly convened Council of Trent. In 1551, by then a bishop of Verona, Lippomano became “a co-president” and a significant player at the council’s sessions on the scriptures and on the use of “sacred books” and justification. In 1548, a year before his promotion to the bishoprics of Verona, Lippomano was sent on another mission—this time to Germany, a high-stake enterprise. He was seeking to convince Emperor Charles V to “remove these Lutheran preachers from all of Germany, and the writers and printers of books, to prohibit the use of heretical books, the sale of monasteries and holy places . . . and to see that in Germany a good and true reform of the prelates and all of the clergy be done under the authority of Your Sanctity, and to restitute property usurped by the Protestants to the Catholic Church.” Lippomano would seek to implement a similar program seven years later in Poland. In the Holy Roman Empire, the reception of the papal delegation was hardly warm. “There was not a person,” Lippomano wrote to Cardinal Farnese from Innsbruck, “among either friars, or priests, or seculars who would demonstrate any will to see us, or to acknowledge that we are the servants of His Holiness. May God illuminate their minds, so that our coming might bring some fruit.” The emperor, who was suffering from gout, did not receive Lippomano and his companion immediately, but illness was not the only reason for the delay—the visit of the papal nuncio was met by a deep sense of distrust. Lippomano lamented to Cardinal Farnese that the delegation was suspected of inciting “rebellion.” Striving for the reform of the clergy and fighting heresy became central in Lippomano’s ser vice to the Catholic Church. As bishop, he engaged in pasto-


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ral activity in his diocese: preached, administered sacraments, visited parishes, and generally did all he could to “reform the clergy.” Upon his return from Germany to Verona, Lippomano was distressed to find that “heresy” was spreading “in piazzas, shops, and taverns, even among the laundry women,” with great harm to “the faith in Christ and to the detriment of the souls.” In July 1548, he wrote of the sorry state of his diocese, where more than five thousand did not take Communion, which had been the case for “some four, six, ten, or fifteen years.” He ordered that “all those who are suspect of faith and infected by Lutheran heresy, or read prohibited books, are to be exposed under heavy penalties.” Two years later, the bishop became involved in the prosecution of heretics in his city. The trial of the Verona “heretics,” or “the bad Lutheran plant,” as they were called, lasted from February to August 1550. At its core were two key issues— the justification of faith and the doctrine of transubstantiation with the “real presence of our Lord in the host consecrated in the hands of a priest.” Minor issues included the intercession of the saints, purgatory, the authority of the pope, and the importance of fasts and confession. In addition, the trial had an irregularity that would characterize Lippomano’s involvement six years later in the trial against the Jews and two bishops in Poland—it excluded the secular authority from participation. The presence of “the bad Lutheran plant” in Verona had prompted Lippomano to write—with the help of other Verona clerics (Mafeo Albertino, a canon in Verona, and Giovanni del Bene, the “archpriest” of Verona’s Church of St. Stephen, arciprete di Santo Stefano) — a book in the vernacular, Confirmatione et stabilimento di tutti i dogmi catholici: con la subuersione di tutti fondamenti, motive, et ragioni dei Moderni Eretici (Confirmation and the Establishment of all Catholic Dogmas, with the Subversion of the Fundamentals, Motives, and Reasons of Contemporary Heretics ). It was first published in Venice in 1553, between the trial in Verona and Lippomano’s mission to Poland. In this thick octavo volume, Lippomano decried heresy promptly on the title page, exhorting the reader to: “Read, pious reader so you may desire to live and die in the true and holy faith of the Ancient Fathers, and you shall see that a similar work has not come into your hands, one which includes a complete refutation of the whole of Lutheranism.” The book was divided into three parts: the first dealt “only with the matters of the church and the weapons with which one can overcome the heretics and throw [them] to the ground”; the second discussed “all the articles [of faith] around which these innovators

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have introduced false doctrines and are [now] duping the world with apparent reasons and authority based on the Scriptures, badly understood and interpreted by them”; and the third was about the seven sacraments of the church. The chapter on the Eucharist in part 3 was the longest in the book; the Eucharist was a principal problem in Lippomano’s fight against heresy in Italy, Germany, and Poland, as well. The book offered the reader a guide on how to recognize a heretic and discussed all “articles [of faith] concerning which these innovators have introduced false doctrines and they deceive the world with apparent reasons and authority from the Scripture, interpreted and understood badly by them.” On January 13, 1555, the pope, then Julius III, nominated Lippomano as the nuncio of the Apostolic See to the Kingdom of Poland, which had been “infected by the heretical depravity.” But Julius III died in March and was replaced by Pope Marcellius III, who himself died in May, less than a month after assuming the papal tiara. Only after Giovanni Pietro Carafa’s ascension to papacy as Pope Paul IV did Lippomano embark on his new mission, happy to be serving his long-standing patron. Paul IV added to Lippomano’s responsibilities, ordering him to go to Germany before proceeding to Poland on urgent business, since the imperial and Protestant factions were about to meet in a diet at Augsburg. Lippomano left Verona in mid-July, but horrible weather set the tone for the rest of his mission. There was so much rain that “a couple of times it became dangerous to life,” and Lippomano began to suffer from “the bitterest pain” on his side, which he attributed to “great cold” and to exhaustion and fear that he would “lose his life in these mountains.” Once at Augsburg, he met with other papal emissaries to Poland—among them, Duke Gian Battista Castaldo—and he learned of the dire religious situation and of a diet just completed with a debate on matters of religion. Lippomano was told of the plague in several cities, including in the kingdom’s capital of Cracow. He was thus forced to bypass Cracow, where he had expected to meet the queen, and went instead to Warsaw. To make matters worse, his entire luggage had been sent ahead to Cracow. Money, too, complicated the mission. Lippomano had felt obligated to “live abundantly and a little splendidly” in order to increase the honor of the pope. His entourage of thirty required a large budget, and the supply of funds was quickly depleted. In early September, Lippomano departed from Augsburg, and, after thirty-two days of insufferable journey, during which he could find no Catholic church to hear the Mass and had to endure “rain,


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heresies, bad lodging, sleeping on the ground, drinking beer,” not to mention the plague, he arrived in Warsaw to be met by Queen Bona Sforza. He lamented that he had not found “a person, whether a member of the church or a secular, who would approach to show us the way, let alone welcome us. On the contrary, in many places they did not even offer us lodging.” His companion, the Spaniard Jesuit Alfonso Salmeron, compared the journey to purgatory and penitence “for all one’s sins. . . . Such is the discomfort.” With lack of wine, they had to drink beer and bad water, and they had to sleep on the ground, but “thank God” they were all healthy, Salmeron reported. Still, Lippomano was unwilling to accept wine from the king’s cellars lest it compromise his mission. Lippomano’s mission to Poland led to the prosecution of bishops and Jews and to political meddling that exacerbated the religious and political conflicts between the king, Protestants and Catholics, and the Church. But, in the long term, Lippomano’s influence endured; his eight-volume CounterReformation version of the lives of saints became a model for the Polish version of the lives of saints by the famous preacher Piotr Skarga.

The Trial at Sochaczew, 1556 In April 1556, Dorota Łazęcka, a Christian woman who had served in a Jewish house in the town of Sochaczew in central Poland, went on trial, accused of providing a consecrated wafer to local Jews, among them her employer, Bieszko Szkolnik. It is difficult to know what happened that spring in Sochaczew. But it is clear that Lippomano, who was then staying in the bishop’s palace in the small town of Łowicz just 25 km away from Sochaczew, played a crucial role in the trial. The actual trial records are lost. Polish courts, less diligent than the inquisition in Spain or Italy, did not record testimonies word for word. Still, even full trial records would provide only what the accusers collected and preserved, their presentation of the case against the Jews, and their justification of the outcome. The Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Secret Vatican Archive) has preserved reports of the trial that were sent to Rome at the time, including what appear to be Latin translations of the interrogations, the posttrial investigation ordered by Nuncio Lippomano, and correspondence between Lippomano and Rome. There are also a few other surviving fragmentary sources for the case, including documents of privileges guaranteeing Jews peace,

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decrees from the second stage of the trial that was held a few weeks later in the town of Płock, and letters of safe passage for Jews that protected them and their property against violence in the wake of the trial, issued by King Sigismund August (Zygmunt August ) in 1556 and 1557. The reports sent to Rome contain contradictory accounts of the events, among them apparent confessions by Dorota Łazęcka and Bieszko Szkolnik in Latin translations from the vernacular Polish; these are loaded with theological language that suggests they were not literal translations of actual confessions, but accounts constructed rather carefully by officials. The reports of posttrial investigation contain summaries of interviews with thirteen carefully selected male inhabitants of Sochaczew who were questioned about the trial, some of them members of the city council and participants in the trial proceedings, others simply prominent and affluent members of the town community, including one named Abraham, identified as “a baptized Jew, son of Lazarius of Łowicz.” Brief summaries of the trial included in Lippomano’s letters to Rome and letters ordering Nicolaus Dzierzgowski, the archbishop of Poznań and the primate of Poland, to investigate the case and its miracle, were culled from several contradictory versions of the alleged events. These summaries closely resembled the classic narrative of host desecration familiar from medieval western Europe and from late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century broadsheets and pamphlets published in the German lands. In Lippomano’s summaries, as in the classic narrative, the desecration took place around Easter, not surprising since this is the time when Catholics would receive Communion, and involved the same cast of characters—a Jewish man who had tempted a Christian woman servant to deliver to him the host she was expected to obtain after receiving Communion (or, as in the Poznań legend, the host stolen directly from the church). The classic version continues with the Jew, sometimes in the company of other Jews, tormenting the host with sharp objects—knives, nails, a hammer—each representing a tool of the crucifixion. A miracle would follow; the host would bleed or be transformed into a baby Jesus or a crucifix. Punishments of Jews and their Christian collaborators ensued, sometimes accompanied by conversions of Jewish observers, as was said to have occurred in Paris in 1213 and in 1290. Dorota Łazęcka of Sochaczew fit the profi le of the stereotypical Christian collaborator. As in the classic narratives, she was a servant in a Jewish house, and according to Archbishop Dzierzgowski’s summary, “an impious


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woman . . . forgetful of the welfare of her soul.” She had served for about three years, “against the rules of law, sacred canons, and good morals [mores],” in the house of a Jew, Bieszko Szkolnik, a known figure in the local Jewish community, as his appellation “Szkolnik,” a sexton, suggests. Because of her “subservience” (subordinatione ) to Jews, she received “the body of our holiest God and Savior, Jesus Christ, in her impure mouth,” removed it “secretly,” and “delivered it into the wicked hands of the circumcised” Jews, selling it for money. The Jews then, so the letter continues, “savagely stabbed the body of the Lord, who is wonderful in his majesty in his most divine sacrament, with a sharp knife,” and “nails.” As a result of this “torture,” blood flowed “miraculously from the bread.” The additional documents in the dossier sent to Rome further elaborate on the details of the trial and provide, especially in their contradictions, sources for the study of the communal dynamics and common knowledge of the events in town. A summary of questions for the investigation of this “horrendous crime of Sacrilege against the Divine Majesty”— or, as Church officials termed it, “crime laesae maiestatis divinae”— adds information about the accusation’s context and reveals the nuncio’s acceptance of the charges and the language used to describe the case. Dorota’s confessions—“legitimately made and extracted from the original records” in the presence of the town’s judge and leader, the chief magistrate (wójt), and city jurors— only tell the story up to the point of her “revealing,” under torture, that Bieszko had been involved. In the confession, even in this problematic document, nothing is mentioned about the “stabbing” of the host or the miracle that was said to have followed. Dorota’s deposition, as recorded in the Latin “translation,” reveals that she had a child, a baby girl, by Jacob, the son of her employer, Bieszko. The infant girl had died within three days of her birth and was buried, unbaptized, in the Jewish cemetery in town. Dorota is reported to have said that Bieszko promised her three thalers and a fancy dress made from an expensive textile, ornamented with silk. She left the Jew’s house on the Saturday before Easter (sabbato magno), went to a village nearby, and on Easter Monday ( feria secunda da Pascha) in a church in the village of Kozłów, not her parish, she took the “the sacrament of the body of Christ” during Mass without confessing “her sins,” “preserved it in her mouth, and then removed and wrapped it into a kerchief.”  She spent the night in Łaźniki, or Łążek (presumably her home village, given her appellation Łazęcka), and on Tuesday morning, she returned to Sochaczew,

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“where she gave this sacrament to the Jew, Bieszek [Bieszko].”  Soon, three other Jews, “Michałek, Socha, and Joseph,” arrived and “took [the host] to the synagogue.” On the following Sunday, before her capture, the Jews Socha and Jacob are said to have come to her in the village and “ordered her to flee.”  Her confession mentioned attacks by dogs, a frequent motif in these stories, while she was carrying the stolen host from Kozłów to Łaźniki, and ends with a reference to another Christian woman from Sochaczew who had given birth to a child by Michałek, a baby boy, who survived and was baptized. The account closes with a note on Dorota’s execution at the stake on April 23, a single day after her arrest. Dorota’s story ending with her handing the host over to the Jews is picked up in confessions that Bieszko (here, in Latin, Benedictus) apparently made in front of jurors, only some of whom were the same as those who witnessed Dorota’s confession. Bieszko is said to have confirmed that Dorota had lived in his house and that they had made a deal on Palm Sunday that she would deliver the “Sacrament of the Eucharist” to him in exchange for a red dress. She brought it to him on the “third day of Easter” (the Tuesday after Easter), and he and his companions, “Joseph, Michael, and Socha,” took it to the synagogue. There, the transcript says, “he acknowledged these [sic] Jews stabbed the Holy Sacrament of the Body of the Son of God under the species of the host with a nail [acu pupugisse], and they saw blood flow from this host.” They “collected [the blood] with a spoon into a bowl” and moved it into a glass vessel, a motif mentioned in many late fi fteenth- and early sixteenth-century ritual murder and host desecration cases in German lands. Part of the “blood,” they kept in Sochaczew, and transported the rest to Końska Wola, where it was kept in the house of “vice-captain Marcus,” who delivered it to Jews in the city of Lublin. Bieszko added “that he did this out of subservience to the Jews of Lublin.” When asked why Jews needed the blood, he answered that he did not know, but “had learned from Jewish leaders [a senioribus iudeis]” that it was needed during circumcisions to spread over the wound. The belief that Jews divided and distributed the blood, or the hosts, as the case might be, was common to many host desecration tales of late medieval Europe. In a broadside from circa 1500 publicizing the 1477 desecration in Passau, such distribution is explicitly portrayed on one of the images. But the Christian notion of division and distribution of the host might be related to the popular distribution of relics among Christians, including “the


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holy blood of Christ,” samples of which were said to be housed in a number of sites across Europe. In his testimony, Bieszko named as his accomplices a number of Jewish community leaders from Lublin, Brześć (Brest Litovsk ), and other smaller towns. But it is significant that he also reportedly confessed to another “crime” by his companion, Joseph—the killing of a Christian boy, in some versions, the son of a certain noblewoman. The body “was then buried in a field but he did not know whose field.” Bieszko was not forced to explain why the boy was killed. Although it is not the first known case of such an accusation in Poland (the first seems to have taken place in 1547), it might be the first in which a Jew, accused of something else, is said to have confessed to other such “crimes.” Another unusual aspect is the burial. In the common narratives of ritual murder, the child’s body was almost never buried but thrown into a river, behind a pigs’ stall, or into woods, only to be discovered by people or dogs. A conflated version of the host desecration and ritual murder accusation emerged during the second stage of the trial in Płock in June 1556, with both described as hearsay in the posttrial investigation by Church officials. Like Dorota Łazęcka only a few weeks earlier, Bieszko Szkolnik was burned at the stake “for his crimes” in the presence of “many nobles and others” in Sochaczew on May 15, 1556. Two weeks later, on June 1, 1556, the four Jews implicated by Dorota, who had escaped only to be captured a few weeks later—Joseph, Socha, Michałek, and Jacob (Bieszko’s son)—were burned at the stake in the royal city of Płock, a residence of the Płock Palatine. At the order of the king, they had been transferred to Płock for interrogations because there was no appropriate judge in Sochaczew. Joseph, Socha, and Jacob were interrogated, both with and without torture, on the Thursday and Friday following Pentecost (May 28–29 respectively). The Latin summary of the interrogation, infused with Christian theological concepts, indicates that they too confessed to everything, plus some other disturbing details that connected host desecration with ritual murder. The summary of Joseph’s reported testimony is the longest and most detailed of the three. He apparently claimed that along with “the beadle [Bieszko], Socha, Michał, and a son of the said beadle,” he had made a “contract” with Dorota on the day “of Christian Passover” to obtain the “sacrament of the body of Christ” in exchange for five thalers and a red dress. Socha’s and Jacob’s confessions repeated the same. After Dorota gave the wafer to the beadle, Joseph’s testimony continues, they secretly took it to

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their synagogue and “stabbed the Venerable Sacrament of the Body of the Lord” with a knife; “a wonderfully fragrant blood flowed” from it. As Bieszko had done earlier, Joseph also implicated Jews from Lublin who were to have received “blood,” but “whose names he did not know.” He is said to have confessed that they took the remains of the “sacrament” to his house, which they “buried under a bench near a window” and placed “blood turnips” on top (in sanguini rapas super imposuimus). (Here, the “blood turnips” were likely beets, thought to cover up the blood said to be flowing from the host.) When asked why such “blood” was used, Joseph answered that “blood from the sacrament of the body of Christ and also blood from Christian boys is most needed for pregnant women” for easing the extreme pain during delivery; “all pain falls away from the sick woman anointed in this way.”  He told of blind Jewish newborns cured with “this blood.” Sustaining the connection between host desecration and ritual murder in the summary of Joseph’s testimony was an admission, more detailed than Bieszko’s, to the killing of a six-year-old child, “whom we tortured and stabbed and removed all the blood,” “before the plague in Sochaczew.” Unlike Bieszko, who said that the body had been buried in a field, Joseph said that they “had buried [it] in our cemetery.”  The summaries of Socha’s and Jacob’s confessions said the same. Their version may have been a conflation of the burial of Dorota’s newborn. Or, perhaps, forced to admit to a murder in which no body was apparently found and pressured to say what they had done with the body, they said that they had buried it in their cemetery. The claim of burying the body in the Jewish cemetery departed from the most common stories of ritual murder. The closest is the narrative from the 1470 trial in Endingen, in which one of the Jews, Lazar of Worms, said that after killing a child, he and his accomplices had buried the body near the Jewish cemetery. It is difficult to say how the answers the three gave were elicited, since the surviving documents do not include the verbatim questions or, for that matter, even the exact answers. The second of the four captured Jews, Socha, in repeating the entire desecration story in his testimony, implicated certain prominent Jews, including Itzhak Brodawka from Brześć, who in fact may have been crucial in mustering help in the aftermath of Bieszkos execution by contacting the palatine of Brześć, Łukasz Górka. Socha’s testimony includes an explanation for why blood was needed that differs from Joseph’s. Like others, he mentioned circumcision, but described it in terms more reminiscent of the


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Christian baptism, saying that on the eighth day after birth, the boy’s head was marked with “the blood from the sacrament of Lord’s body or from Christian boys.”  This is likely a reference to the smearing of the infant’s lips with wine mixed with drops of circumcision blood following the ceremony. Unusually, though, he mentioned a similar ritual that applied to girls four weeks after birth. The interrogations ended on Saturday, May 29; the following Monday, the four Jews were burned at the stake in Płock. Sometime later, a letter from King Sigismund August dated June 8, 1556, and addressed to Stanisław Borek, Sochaczew’s city captain, called for a full and proper investigation of the case, for release on bail of the arrested Jews, and a return of property to the arrested Jews and to other Jews who may have fled the town. The letter had not been dispatched in time and arrived too late, but it showed a change of heart in the king. In fact, the officials involved in the trial might have been startled by it, for they were under the impression that they were following directives from the king, dispatched in a letter of May 4. In that earlier letter, the king expressed “horror and the pain of our soul” occasioned by the news about “that woman, Dorothea Lazezka [sic] who having taken the Sacrosanct Body of God and Our Savior Jesus Christ into her impure mouth and then having removed it secretly, had given it to the perfidious Jew Bieszko Szkolnik.” The king admitted, echoing Protestant rhetoric, that “although our God is in heaven, and the hands of the impious cannot violate [him],” it is not appropriate for a Christian king to allow “the mystery of our faith” to be profaned and contaminated by “the audacity of the perfidious and wicked people.” He ordered interrogation of the captured Jews—Bieszko, Michałek, Socha, and Joseph—to discover “what they did with the Sacred Sacrament.” He demanded that they then be appropriately punished for their crime, and their property confiscated. The officials followed these instructions and the Jews were burned at the stake, an entire week before the king’s second letter called for a “careful investigation,” for release of the imprisoned Jews on bail, and the return of their confiscated property. The king’s belated change of heart had come about as a result of rigorous efforts of Jews to save those arrested. The period between Bieszko’s execution in Sochaczew on May 15, 1556, and the execution of Joseph, Socha, Michałek, and Jacob on June 1 was filled with events other than interrogations. During those two weeks, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews sought to intervene in the case, or at least to explore its meaning. A week after Bieszko’s execution, an

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investigation of the case, commissioned by the archbishop of Poznań, Nicolaus Dzierzgowski, was held in the parish house in Sochaczew (in domo plebani). Thirteen men were interviewed, among them officials who participated in the trial. Their testimonies provide additional details about the trial and its process, as well as about public awareness and opinion regarding the case. The first witness summoned was Stanisław Borek, the city captain and judge (tribunus et capitaneus Sochaczowiensi), a man about seventy years old, of “good reputation,” “mature,” and “a good Catholic, took communion this year”; that last point was very important for the investigators, who appear to have required that interviewed “witnesses” be “good Catholics.” Borek’s account reveals certain aspects of the case that were absent from both Dorota’s and Bieszko’s testimonies. “At a certain time after Easter, around the Sunday of Divine Mercy [the Sunday after Easter Sunday, or April 12],” Borek stated, “priests in Sochaczew’s churches were making claims in public sermons about a certain sale of the most holy sacrament and [they] were denouncing this very captain and the city magistrate of negligence of such crime, and they urged [the captain and the magistrate] to conduct an appropriate investigation of this crime.” Pressured by these admonitions, Borek decided to open an investigation, and from hearsay he learned about “this woman” from Łaźniki. He arrested Dorota immediately, and she implicated the Jews, especially Bieszko Szkolnik. From Bieszko’s testimony “under torture and before torture,” Borek learned about the deal and “the miracle.” He also mentioned attempts to thwart the trial by two Jews, Kostka from Brześć and “another from Sochaczew,” who came to him while Bieszko was still in prison to offer “not a small” bribe—fifty “or more” thalers and some damask, which was a huge amount compared to the remuneration of three thalers said to have been offered to Dorota. At the same time, apparently, a Jewish emissary was sent to the king, who had approved the execution in his letter of May 4. According to Borek’s testimony, these efforts were in vain. Bieszko was executed “according to the command of the king.” Then, however, as a result of that mission from the Jews to the king, the king’s second letter came to the city officials on June 8. The Jews’ efforts to thwart the trial were mentioned also by the second witness, a Dominican friar (praesbiter), Adam, interviewed in Sochaczew on May 22. He told investigators he had heard that the Jews presented letters “from the lord Pope” affirming that the Jews did not need “this sacrament


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and that we [Jews] do not hold such beliefs [valoris].” According to Adam, one Jew, Michałek, went all the way to Gniezno to deliver these letters to the archbishop. Adam referenced a conflict over jurisdiction; the deputy palatine had prohibited the town captain from arresting Jews who, in the palatine’s opinion, were not under the captain’s jurisdiction. Significantly, Adam also said that two Jews had come to him to plead that he not mention any sale of the sacrament in his sermons. They were offering him “as much pepper as he wanted.” The papal nuncio, Luigi Lippomano, also spoke of Jews’ efforts to prevent legal action against those captured. In an October 12, 1556, letter to Giovanni Carafa, the Duke of Paliano, Lippomano noted that Jews had come to him “presenting me with I don’t know [how many] ducats (which I rejected), pleading with me . . . they showed me a breve from Pope Paul III to all the Kingdoms of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary urging all prelates and clerics to defend [the Jews] so that they may not be harassed unjustly [ingiustamente molestati].” (This was probably the same letter that Adam mentioned in his testimony.) Lippomano lamented that, “for the honor of the Holy See, such and similar letters should have never been issued”; he complained that Jews in “this Kingdom have considerably more favor and more powerful defenders than the religion of Christ.” A week later, on October 19, Lippomano wrote again to the Duke of Paliano, complaining that after urging the king to castigate the Jews, he had been able to achieve nothing because the Jews “greatly lament that they had given to these palatines, to one a thousand to another 1200 scudi, and even with all this their people were burned.” To Lippomano, their inability to bribe officials was proof of Jewish guilt; he mused that “the dead were indeed guilty, if even after receiving the money [the officials] had them burned.” The testimonies of witnesses interviewed at the parish in Sochaczew reveal much about the hearsay and rumors circulating in town. Some confused the name of Dorota’s child’s father and the child’s sex, saying that it was a boy whose father was Michałek, clearly conflating Dorota with Zophia, whom Dorota had mentioned in her testimony. Some claimed that Dorota had received five thalers, not three, for her “crime.” Others added details that illuminated what happened—if not the actual events, then at least common opinion. The Dominican, Adam, had heard “a rumor among people” that a certain woman who had served among Jews and had not been compensated for her ser vices was heard, after Easter, publicly threatening the Jews that “if

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she were not compensated,” she would tell Christians about “the most divine Sacrament.” Having heard the rumor, Adam began preaching publicly about “the crime” and, after his sermon, the city captain, Stanisław Borek, decided to pursue the case. The sixth witness, Troianus Pucz, a member of the town council, also referred to these rumors and preachers’ sermons about them. Another member of the town council, Georgius Gaiewnik, suggested that the rumors had started among women who had served in Jewish homes and had become the subject of sermons as soon as the rumors reached the preachers. The trial aroused excitement in Poland among both Catholics and Protestants, and reverberated beyond the region to also become the subject of Catholic-Protestant polemic in other parts of Europe. “Not long after the burning” of the “malefactors,” a number of high-profile Protestants descended on the town. The Dominican preacher, Adam, briefly mentioned a prominent visitor “from Lithuania,” probably Łukasz Górka, the palatine of Brześć. Górka and another nobleman, referred to only as N. Miszkowski, refused to believe “in the miracle” of the host. They said it was “impossible that blood should flow from the host, the bread.” But Borek reaffirmed that “the most holy sacrament of Eucharist in form of bread contained the true body of Christ.” One of the testimonies at the posttrial investigation read like an exemplum in support of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: the story of the fifth witness, Abraham from Sochaczew, “a baptized Jew” who had lived in Sochaczew for ten years, presumably having hailed from Łowicz, since he was also described as “the son of the late Lazarus of Łowicz.” The records say that he was about fifty years old and fairly wealthy. Like all of the witnesses, he was said to have “made a confession in the current year on the Saturday before Pentecost,” but unlike the others, he did not take Communion, even though he had converted to Christianity a long time before; this was a potentially dangerous admission, but at the same time, as it became clear, a redeeming one. It provided a perfect confirmation of the miracle in Sochaczew. Abraham told the investigators that he had converted to Christianity while “worshipping on the mountain of the Most Blessed Mary the Virgin in Częstochowa, while a demon was being banished from a woman. He saw immediately when it was ejected, and saw a sign of this ejection on the membrane of the window; moved by that, he accepted baptism.” Still, he did not believe that what “was offered on the altar by the priest was the true body of the lord, nor that blood should flow from it”; that is, not until he


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heard that the Jew who was burned at the stake had confessed both under torture and facing death that blood had indeed flowed from the wafer. The Jewish convert’s eventual affirmation of transubstantiation crowned the report and the investigation. After years of disbelief, he had finally become convinced of it, thanks to the apparent confession by a Jew and despite contemporary efforts by Protestants to ridicule the doctrine. In the end, the trial brought the fruit that Luigi Lippomano and the pope desired, at a time of bourgeoning religious doubts. And, as with earlier cases, the Jews became the decisive witnesses to the truth of Catholic doctrine against the Protestant assault.

“Blasphemies and Evident Heresies”— Catholic Bishops on Trial As Polish historian Hanna Węgrzynek has argued, there is no doubt that the Reformation was at the crux of the 1556 trial at Sochaczew. The Eucharist and the challenges to the Catholic doctrine by the “heretics” must have been on the minds of many clergy in Poland, for in the spring of 1556, Bishop Jan Drohojewski of Włocławek and Bishop Andrzej Zebrzydowski of Cracow were investigated by none other than nuncio Luigi Lippomano in an ecclesiastical court in Łowicz, only 25 km from Sochaczew. In his October 1555 letter to Cardinal Carolo Carafa, Lippomano wrote about his conversation with Queen Bona Sforza concerning the troubling state of Catholic clergy in Poland. She said that “the nobles and princes of the Kingdom, who want to live in their ways, are in most part infected by Lutheranism, or rather, impiety. And if you keep the secret, she said, I will tell you: also the prelates and the clergy, this I see will be a thing very difficult to remedy, and for the remedy I see nothing but a good reform of the clergy and a general Council, or a true national [council].” A few weeks later, in a letter of October 31, 1555, Lippomano again wrote to Cardinal Carafa to complain about “the matters of the faith and church reduced to the worst level. The barons and those in the highest positions in the Kingdom [i primi del Regno] are either Lutheran or Sacramentarian [denying the transubstantiation], the [Royal] Court publicly speaks of Your Sanctity and of the dogmas of the faith, but in the end plebeians have the courage to come to my house and say the most insolent things in the world. I have never seen such insolence either in Germany or in Bohemia.” This was clear hyperbole, for Lippomano had

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seen the spread of Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire when he was an “extraordinary” nuncio in 1548 and again on the eve of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg while visiting German lands on his way to Poland. But, from his writing, it is evident that Lippomano was intent on doing something about “these insolent things”; and that hyperbole served him well. On December 23, 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered Nuncio Lippomano to investigate rumors that Bishops Drohojowski and Zebrzydowski were “polluted with heretical blemish and publicly nurtured among themselves heretical men.” Hearings were to start the following March, but before that, Lippomano traveled to Wilno, which he called “Babylonia . . . because there are Armenians, Muscovites, Ruthenians, Tartars, Turks, Lithuanians, Germans, and Italians, but few good Christians,” to see the king of Poland, Sigismund August and discuss the status of the Church, the rise of “heresy” in Poland, and, as he put it, “to admonish the prelates to help the good mind of His Majesty to eradicate the heresies.” It became apparent that the nuncio had a clear-cut agenda to “eradicate the heresies” and “to make a real reform of the clergy” when the king requested that he offer “safe passage to those of contrary opinion so they may come and tell you what they want and so they may be heard.” Lippomano responded that he “was not sent here to listen to blasphemies of the heretics,” but instead to “find a remedy to the present heresies that are devastating the Kingdom.” While in Wilno, Lippomano sent a letter to Bishop Drohojowski concerning the expulsion of Lutheran preachers from Gdańsk, a city under Drohojowski’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In no uncertain terms, he evoked images of a “good bishop” and a “Christian prelate,” juxtaposing them to imagery of the “heretic” as “a mercenary,” “a wolf,” and “an apostate,” and challenging the bishop to prove himself a good Christian by expelling the preachers. The bishop responded in a letter defending himself, but to no avail. On March 14, Lippomano opened an investigation against him, which was carried out in two stages: the first in Łowicz, ending on April 17, a few days before the arrest of Dorota Łazęcka; and the second in various places—Uniejów, Gniezno, and Włocławek— extending from April 24 until the last witness was examined on May 15, the day of Bieszko’s execution. The two trials certainly were not unrelated. Among the witnesses were a Dominican, Gabriel, magister Ordinis Praedicatorum, originally from Łowicz, but at the time a canon and a preacher in the cathedral church in Gniezno; a number of canons and deacons from


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Włocławek—Jacob Paczyński, Andreas Duchnicki, Stanisław Stempowski, Piotr Piotrkowski, and Florianus de Gniewkowo; Albertus, a teacher in a church school in Włocławek; Nicolaus Sobieburski, a parish priest in the town of Chodecz, about 30 km away from the diocesan seat, Włocławek; and Paulus Głogowski, an archdeacon of Płock and a canon in Poznań. The witnesses were to answer a number of questions about Bishop Drohojowski’s comportment and beliefs. Lippomano, not new to heresy trials, drafted the questions. He inquired with whom the bishop socialized, whether he fulfilled his pastoral duties correctly, whether or not he taught anything new or used “catechisms published by heretics,” whether he supported anyone suspected of heresy, whether he had led a pious life, and whether he allowed “pseudo-preachers” to preach “blasphemies and evident heresies.” The witnesses chosen were to be “true, good Christians, living in the community of believers in Christ and in fellowship of the Holy Mother Church,” and were expected to have confessed all their sins and to have taken “the most sacred Eucharist.” Only two witnesses were chosen to respond to Lippomano’s set of questions. They had been interviewed before Easter. The first witness, Gabriel, the Dominican preacher, said only that he had heard the bishop had had contacts with heretics and had been admonished by a provincial synod four years before. His testimony was less damning than those that followed. The next witness, Matthias Zibicensis, when asked if the bishop “ate meat or fish during the days of Lent, responded that at his table the lord Bishop ate fish but all his family ate meat because [they] did not have fish.” The worst allegations came when Lippomano learned of an incident said to have taken place around Easter. According to one account, on Good Friday, after giving Communion to some students (scholares) “as it is customary,” the bishop called on one of them and asked: “Lo, you! What do you believe you take in the Communion?” When the student responded, “The true and holy Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Blessed Virgin,” the bishop apparently exclaimed: “No, no; you believe the wrong thing [tu credis male]. You have taken a token of [his] body, not the actual body.” He then turned to the schoolmaster, saying: “You teach these students wrong things; teach them that they take the token of the Body of Christ, not indeed true Body.” When the bishop was confronted by a canon, he apparently denied everything, retorting that what was said about him was not true; “they have fabricated” all this against him and “attacked him,” but he was “a good Christian.” From then on, the question of the bishop’s denial of the

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transubstantiation became an issue. Other witnesses noted rumors about the bishop’s disbelief in the transubstantiation; some mentioned they had heard that the bishop had been aggrieved by people’s accusations of heresy. Jacob Paczyński reported to the nuncio: After Easter, Lord Bishop was with the Cathedral chapter and the school master, and in the presence of all the canons of the Cathedral [in presentia omnium Reverendorum Capitularium], bewailed, saying to him: You slander me and bring disrepute that I said that the Holy Eucharist is but a token of the Body of Christ; [but I said] that in it is the true Body of Christ, born of the chaste Virgin Mary, who was hung on the cross and is now in Heaven: body, I say, most true and the most real; what I said about the token was about the meaning [meritum] of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And the school master responded to him: Reverend Lord, and I taught my students, as I had accepted from my Fathers, namely that in it is the true Body of Christ, but I heard Your Reverend Lordship talk about a token, and I repeated nothing more than what I heard from your mouth. In that the bishop responded: You understood it wrong. And this master said again: I did not repeat this out of malevolence, but I reported what I had heard.

The schoolmaster, Albertus, interviewed on May 13 in the second round of the investigation, also reported the incident, including the controversial sentence. After the bishop had asked the students what they believed when they took Communion, he had told them to “believe that it is the token of the meaning of Christ’s passion.” Like other witnesses, Albertus told of the bishop’s efforts to exculpate himself before the whole cathedral chapter on “the third day of Easter,” incidentally the very same day that Dorota was said to have given the stolen Eucharist to the Jews, affirming his belief in “the live, true, and real Body of Christ contained in the eucharist.” The Eucharist became a central theme of the investigation, with the nuncio inquiring about Bishop Drohojowski’s comportment in the church during Mass. One witness testified that, during the “Holy Days of Easter,” the bishop “celebrated [the Mass] according to the custom of the Church,” but another questioned his fulfillment of duties, and still another said the bishop had surrounded himself with “heretics”—in fact, his whole family “was infected with heresy”—who did not observe fasts, “nor did they adore the Most Sacred Sacrament but they turned their faces, and moved away to another part when the Host was elevated.”


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Bishop Jan Drohojowski apparently had many friends whose views were condemned by the Church; one of them was Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, a renowned thinker and writer and a sympathizer with both Calvinism and anti-Trinitarianism, whose book De Republica Emendanda (On the Improvement of the Commonwealth ), especially its part De Ecclesia, “Of the Church,” published in Basel in 1554, was regarded as threatening by the Catholic Church. In his letter to Pope Paul IV, Lippomano described it as “a book against the authority and supremacy of the Apostolic See and the entire Church. I believe that this book was more likely written by a devil than a man because it contains such roguery, wickedness, and falsity. I ask, should it be of the judgment of Your Holiness to make some great writer respond to him . . . so that this book may not remain in this world without an antidote.” Some of the accusations against Bishop Drohojowski came from hearsay; most witnesses in the investigation of the bishop (as in the trial of Dorota and the Jews) were not truly witnesses, but as Carla Mazzio has dubbed them, “ear-witnesses” or “aural witnesses,” that is, witnesses to public rumors. The same public rumors brought another bishop under investigation, Bishop Andrzej Zebrzydowski, who was said— according to the testimonies from the same witnesses and based on hearsay—to have been influenced by Erasmus of Rotterdam; to have maintained friendship with Jan Łaski, a known Protestant leader in Poland and an advisor to the king; to have owned “heretical books,” albeit among “Catholic books, Augustine and others”; and last but not least, his unfit behavior included “loving some disgraceful woman.” Andreas Duchnicki and Stanisław Stampowski claimed that the woman was “a young unbaptized Jewess.” The rumors and hearsay that defined both the investigation of the bishops and the trial of Dorota Łazęcka and the Jews undoubtedly fed off each other. Łowicz, where Lippomano stayed in residence and where he began to investigate Bishop Drohojowski, was, as noted earlier, a mere 25 km from Sochaczew, where the first part of the host desecration trial unfolded, and about 59 km from Płock, where the remaining Jews were executed. Considering the flat terrain, Sochaczew was only a few hours by foot or horse, and Płock was perhaps a full day away. In fact, since Bishop Drohojowski’s seat was in Włocławek (then Władysław), about 91 km from Łowicz and some 100 km away from Sochaczew, all the events occurred within an approximate radius of 100 km. Considering also the high profile of the events, news must have

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traveled fast, despite Lippomano’s efforts to keep the investigation of the bishops secret. After all, it was not every day that a papal nuncio with a relatively large entourage would be in residence in a small Polish town, not to mention investigating a bishop—let alone two, accused of heresy and blasphemy. Travelers, merchants, and probably also vagabonds must have carried the news and rumors. Indeed, news of Lippomano’s visit to Poland had predated his arrival, and he was eagerly awaited by those who longed for help from the pope in the struggle for primacy against the Protestants. The king would later note that if the pope had paid more attention to Poland and its clergy, and if a papal representative had visited all bishoprics, there would have been no serious difficulties with the clergy in Poland. News spread through word of mouth and letters. On November 15, 1555, a man from Poznań wrote about Lippomano to the superior of the Dominican friars in Wilno, saying that “many people talk about his erudition, call him an educated man.” Those who carried the letters, moving from town to town, must have stayed in inns or private residencies, where they could have shared the news. The witnesses summoned by the nuncio had to travel from places far and near to testify and, as clergymen, probably stayed at parish houses and monasteries along the way. The magister of the Dominican order, Gabriel, who lived in Gniezno, had to get from there to Łowicz, his native town. Jacob Paczyński had come from Włocławek, along with two companions from the cathedral chapter, to be interviewed in Łowicz days before the case in Sochaczew erupted. Such visits were unlikely to have gone unnoticed by laity, and certainly would not have been missed by fellow clergy. Perhaps the Dominican preacher in Sochaczew, who seems to have picked up the rumor claiming that a Christian woman was threatening Jews, knew that a bishop had been accused of denying transubstantiation. Dorota was arrested only a week after Lippomano sent his first report on the investigation of the bishop to Pope Paul IV and after Drohojowski’s incident about a denial of transubstantiation. One can only speculate whether news and rumors of Bishop Drohojowski’s apparent heresy reached the preacher in Sochaczew and influenced his preaching. But news of the Sochaczew trial came quickly to Lippomano’s attention and he embraced it enthusiastically; not only did it support his long struggle to affirm the dogma of transubstantiation, but it allowed him to push for his broader agenda—to fight heresy and to assert ecclesiastical authority over cases of religious doctrine.


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In his very long letter of June 21, 1556, to Pope Paul IV, after describing the sorry state of Poland and his readiness to stay longer on his mission despite a strong longing to return to Italy, Lippomano referred briefly to the Sochaczew trial: In recent days, a great case concerning the Most Sacred Sacrament took place here in a town nearby called Sochaczew. [The Sacrament] was sold by a certain Christian woman to Jews, and they stabbed it with nails and knives, and blood visibly came out of it, as Your Holiness shall see better from the common [report] by the Reverend Archbishop and myself. And the woman mentioned was burned with a Jew there. Three others were burned in Płock and that because of the doing by both of us [archbishop and Lippomano], if we had not sent someone to instigate the palatine [Sierpski], without doubt they would have been released because of the expected favors that these traitors receive from every side. But my nephew with my chancellor, and those with the Reverend Archbishop have done so much with the palatine that they were worn-out [son fessi]. And convicted, they were burned, as You shall see better from the public documents and from the original letter from this Palatine, which I equally send you. Those sad sacramentarians want to defend these Jews as much as they know and can, so that the miracle may not be shown, which would go against [dà in capo] their perverse opinions. But as soon as this business was finished, in another place in the Kingdom another similarly horrendous case emerged, also concerning the Jews, as Your Beatitude shall see from the attached copy. And it happened that they have bought impunity with their money from those of influence in the Kingdom [gli maggiori del Regno].

In a postscript, Lippomano informed the pope that he had just received a copy of the king’s decree of June 8, ordering an investigation of the case and permitting the Jews to return to their houses in Sochaczew. Lippomano lamented that the king had implied that the palatine and Sochaczew’s city captain, who had collaborated with Lippomano in prosecution of the Jews, were “scoundrels who judged the case wrongly.” In his letter of July 7, 1556, to Giovanni Carafa, Lippomano admitted to a rift between him and the king on the matter of “the quick burning of these Jews about whom I had written earlier.” Until the end, Lippomano maintained that persecution of the Jews was just; he was unapologetic, indeed, even proud about his role in the whole case. In another letter to Giovanni Carafa, he reiterated that he was responsible for the persecution of the Jews who were eventually burned in Płock.

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Reporting the impossibility of implementing in Poland the bull by Paul IV, Cum nimis absurdum, which among other things would relegate Jews to ghettos, Lippomano wrote: “I have received a copy of the bull that His Holiness has issued against the Jews. And may it please God that one could implement it here, but I see no chance because they have so many favors that it is astonishing, and all these Lords Palatines are their manifest defenders. They also say many crazy things about me, because I solicited justice against these Jews who were burned in Płock, from which, if there had been a delay of even one day, they would have certainly been freed because of things that I understood and saw only later. Money is enough to change everything [Basta che gli danari giocano per tutto].” As in his October 19 report about his meeting with the king, Lippomano continued to maintain that the Jews committed “a sin against God.”

Catholic-Protestant Polemic after Sochaczew The Sochaczew trial became a countrywide affair, and news about it spread even beyond Poland. The witnesses in Lippomano’s posttrial investigation mentioned visits to Sochaczew by high-profile visitors, such as the palatine of Brześć, Łukasz Górka, perhaps urged to intervene by Itzhak Brodawka of Brześć, an influential and apparently well-known merchant and minter in Poland. The trial was reported in local chronicles and polemical pamphlets in Poland and abroad. One sixteenth-century anonymous Catholic chronicler who copied a medieval chronicle of Poland, updating it to 1556, noted how unusual that year was. In March 1556, he wrote, two unusual red comets appeared in the sky, one on March 3 and another on the last day of the month. For most Europeans of the time, comets had a supernatural meaning as “miraculous signs sent by God,” heralding disasters. For the Polish chronicler, these comets signaled “blasphemies against the sacraments and against the ceremonies of the Christian church” to occur that year. His account tells of heretics’ abuses of the churches, from which “sacred images were thrown out and,” he wrote, “signs of the passion of Christ were torn down from the pillars on the side of roads and dispersed in the fields.” He recounted an incident said to have taken place in the town of Wiślicz, where a crucifix was dragged from a church through the streets, while participants were “blaspheming in the custom of the Jews [saying]: if you are god, defend


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yourself, move your feet.” For the anonymous chronicler, the Sochaczew trial was part of the larger problems with “blasphemy” and “heresy” that Poland was facing. The chronicler included two versions of the trial. In the first, short version, he briefly stated that Jews “wounded the sacrament of eucharist bought from a Christian woman, and from it blood flowed abundantly.” Both the Jews and the woman “were burned by fire, and a great plague descended upon Poland.” In the second version, closely resembling the account sent by Lippomano to Rome, the precise date is given, “the third day of Easter, that is the seventh day of April,” on which “that woman” delivered the host “wrapped in a cloth” to the Jew, who took it to the synagogue, “stabbed it with a nail [pungebat acu],” and blood flowed abundantly, “which he poured into a glass container [pixidem].” The chronicler went on to say that some of the “blood” was sent to “Jew Marcus to Końska Wola,” who passed it on to the Jews in Lublin. Paralleling the version sent to Rome, the chronicler noted that Jews used it on “the wounds of the circumcised boys,” and “if they could not obtain the blood of the sacrament, they killed a Christian infant and used his blood.” After noting that the Jews and Dorota were tried and burned, he exclaimed, “Oh, how great [is] the cruelty of the worthless blind Jews.” The chronicler’s diatribe continued: “And this nation of the worthless Jews is spread around the whole world, through the provinces, cities, and towns, and disseminating various errors against the Christian faith and against the Lord Jesus Christ, they arouse discord among Christians, as had predicted this man Mordechai in the history of Esther.” The anonymous chronicler likely perceived a parallel between biblical Esther’s and Mordechai’s influence in the court of King Ahasuerus and their roles in the king’s turning against “his people.” The chronicler’s claim that Jews “disseminate various errors against the Christian faith and against the Lord Jesus Christ” and “arouse discord among Christians” was undoubtedly colored by the Reformation and the connection that some made between Jews and Protestants. At the time of the Sochaczew trial, new rumors emerged that a Protestant minister in the village of Chełmice near Kalisz, a major city in the west of Poland about 175 km away from Sochaczew in the diocese of Poznań, had stolen two consecrated hosts, one from a monstrance used in processions during the Corpus Christi festivities and the other from the ciborium. He was said to have sold them to Jews in Kalisz. But the chronicler’s connection between Jews and Protestants may

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have stemmed from the Protestants’ intervention in the Sochaczew case, which was more a polemic against the Catholic Church than it was aid to the Jews. The chronicler’s awareness of the trial’s details also may have come from the numerous polemical pamphlets published by both Catholics and Protestants, most of which have not survived. One such pamphlet in a small octavo format of twenty-two pages, or eleven folios, On God Tortured and Beaten by the Jews in Sochaczew and on Its False Miracles, was published by Protestants soon after the trial, seemingly in response to the nonextant Catholic pamphlet, Extracts from Sochaczew, the likely source from which the anonymous chronicler drew information about the trial. The Protestant pamphlet was a blatant attack on Catholics, but was by no means sympathetic to the Jews. It began with a strong claim: “The Satan [together] with the Antichrist, having nothing with which to defend and to be proud of their idolatrous errors, which God’s word has brought to light before the people, wants to rescue their idolatry (which leads people to damnation) with numerous fresh lies and murders.” Equating Catholicism with idolatry, supported by “the Satan together with the Antichrist,” the author made clear that the “fresh lies and murders” were about Jews and the alleged desecration of the host. The pamphlet focused in on the falsity of the Catholic claims, stressing the medieval, thus human, origins of the doctrine of transubstantiation: “And they scare people with made up false miracles, wishing to prop up their new God . . . (about whom Christians had known nothing for twelve hundred years since his assumption to heaven). . . . And they spread news, distributing among people alleged Extracts from Sochaczew’s Records about the burning of the Jew, Bieniasz [Bieszko], who was burned there [Sochaczew], who (as this Extract claims) bought the body of God’s Son for a thaler and for a red dress from Dorota Lazencka [Łazęcka]; from which Sacred Body, in the form of the host, blood flowed, when Jews pricked it with needles.” In saying that “Christians had known nothing for twelve hundred years” about the presence of Christ in the wafer until the Catholic Church began to promote the doctrine of transubstantiation following the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the pamphlet’s author situated the doctrine of transubstantiation in a specific historical moment, and thus asserted its human origins. Catholics popularized their “idolatrous” claim of the blood flowing from the wafer in Sochaczew to prove “real presence of God’s Son in the host; that is carnal presence as when he was born of the virgin.” And the author ad-


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monished his readers: “[Oh] Christian man, you know that we Christians take our faith not from scoundrel Jew, nor from tortured and beaten miracles, but rather from the words and teachings of God’s Son. . . . Sacrificed once, he suffered once for many sins. . . . And so Christ, having celebrated the sacrifice once, sits eternally on the right of God [the Father]. . . . And so we confess in our Credo: He ascended to heaven, and he sits to the right of Omnipotent God the Father, from thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. . . . And so the wretched Jews cannot again torture our beloved Son of God sitting to the right of God the Father with needles.” The writer added sarcastically that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, not under Borek,” a reference to Stanisław Borek, Sochaczew’s city captain. Ridiculing the claims of the accusers and mocking transubstantiation and the real presence of Christ in the wafer, he went on to say: God’s Son suffers not whenever the Pope wishes so or a Jew desires, or the Devil gets angry. Even the same Roman prelates write in their Decrees (de consecrat. distincti. 2): The beloved body after resurrection cannot be offended. And wouldn’t that be an offence, if blood flowed after stabbing? If blood flowed from one wafer, wouldn’t it flow from another? Among the papists each day they break one hundred thousand [wafers], and no blood flows from any of them. And so their things and their false Christs are eaten by mice, burnt and shattered by lightning and thunder. One can multiply fresh examples. But there is no need: Because we know that God much loves his Son’s beloved body taken out of Mary the Virgin. He loves his Son faithful God and man. . . . He does not throw lightning and thunders. He does not allow mice to bite the Lord. Neither does he need locks to protect him from these lowly creatures.

The repeated reference to mice and lightning and thunder may not have been incidental. According to a legend about the site of a eucharistic cult in Andechs, a mouse discovered three miraculous hosts there. And “lightning and thunder” may have been a reference to Wilsnack, where the hosts were not destroyed even by the fire and the rain that followed the destruction of the church in which the hosts had been held. Still, this discussion was a caricature of the Catholic beliefs, for among the Catholic theologians, “it is difficult to find anyone who thought God could be literally chewed, corrupted, or excreted.” In fact, the crude arguments by Protestant polemicists had been considered earlier by Catholic theologians. For example, in discussing questions of immutability, Thomas Aquinas acknowledged issues arising

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from the presence of Christ in the Eucharist as stored and displayed in locked ciboria, pyxes, and monstrances, arguing that “such objects cannot be Christ” for that would mean “incarceration” of his body and, for Aquinas, a clear impossibility. In a vulgar polemic of the time, the subtleties of theological discourse had no place on either side, for each side sought to score public popularity. Other pamphlets followed. Lippomano’s letter to Pope Paul IV of June 21, 1556, in which he reported on the trial, was published in German in Königsberg in 1556. But the Duae Epistolae (Two Letters ), published in Latin also in Königsberg by Pier Paolo Vergerio, were perhaps most polemically salacious and most internationally famous. Vergerio was a former papal nuncio and a bishop turned “heretic” and “enemy of the Church” or, as he saw himself, “a true Christian” who called the pope “an Antichrist.” The pamphlet included letters between Nuncio Lippomano and Nicolas Radziwiłł, known as the “Black,” the palatine of Wilno and perhaps the most prominent Protestant leader in Poland. Even though letters from both Lippomano and Radziwiłł were printed, there is no question who was the hero and who was the villain. Under Lippomano’s signature at the end of his letter, the reader could find a designation, indignus Nuncius Apostolicus, or “unworthy apostolic nuncio.” Lippomano attacked Radziwiłł, whom he termed the “leader of heretics,” for supporting heresy in building “sacrilegious altars”; in promoting Communion “under both species”; in disseminating “blasphemies” by allowing “false preachers” in churches; in not only reading but also “offering and sponsoring the printing of heretical books”; in regarding “the Most Sacred Eucharist [to be] idolatry”; in supporting the marriage of priests, and for many other offenses. Radziwiłł’s own response was a fierce attack on Catholicism, admittedly its caricature version, written not as a private response to the nuncio, but as a book specifically designed to be published. It appeared in print a few days after it was written. The Polish scholar Ignacy Chrzanowski considered Radziwiłł’s response one of the finest examples of sixteenth-century Polish religious polemic. Radziwiłł, eviscerating the nuncio and Catholic teachings, said that what the nuncio called heresy, “out of hatred and arrogance,” is the true Christian religion in the mold of that accepted by the emperor, Constantine the Great, and affirmed by the council in Nicea. He said it was the nuncio himself who was a true heretic. Radziwiłł responded to Lippomano’s accusations point by point: “Sacrilegious altars”? Radziwiłł built true Christian altars devoted


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only to God, unlike the truly “sacrilegious” and “idolatrous” Catholic altars, devoted to “wooden Marys,” or “false gods” like the “demons of Delphi.” Echoing the anonymous pamphlet, Radziwiłł wrote that the Mass with its magical incantations also was idolatrous, and that Catholics worshipped “their god locked in gold and silver.” The Polish edition of Radziwiłł’s and Lippomano’s impassioned exchange included a number of epigrams against the nuncio by several famous Polish Protestants; one directly addressed the question of the Eucharist and the Sochaczew trial. Another, entitled Concerning the Same Aloisius Lippomano a Pontifical Legate Who Ordered Jews of Sochaczew to Be Burned for the Violated Bread of Eucharist, was probably written by the prominent Polish humanist and Protestant Andrzej Trzeciecki. It picked up the motif of Catholicism as heresy and idolatry, and mocked Lippomano for his involvement in the Sochaczew trial: Condemning Jews to flames [for] violating, with a knife, the body of the bread, Which the commoners [plebs], devoted to the Pope, as if they were heretics, Consider to be God, Lippomano himself became a Heresiarch. Is it not a small heresy to think that bread is God and Christ? And that true blood flowed from it?

And the epigram continued: Jews deny that Christ was both man and God, But you, on the contrary, believe that he is in a scrap of bread, Both are great errors, however opposite, And each therefore is deserving of flames.

Though Protestants did try to intervene on behalf of the Jews in Sochaczew, they did so— as Lippomano himself had noted in his June 21 letter to Pope Paul IV—not necessarily out of mercy, but for polemical reasons to prove their theological points. Both sides knew very well that the accusation of host desecration against the Jews was useful in their efforts to combat their religious opponents; neither side cared much about the welfare of the “scoundrel Jews.” But if polemic was the most public fallout from the trial, for Lippomano, the trial was also an opportunity to try to halt the nobles’ efforts to pass a law— considered prior to Lippomano’s arrival, at the Sejm in Piotrków in

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1555—that would transfer cases concerning religion from ecclesiastical to secular courts. The law was not passed; however, the steps taken proposed a truce according to which no religious crimes would be prosecuted by the ecclesiastical courts, including accusations of blasphemy against the sacrament and the Trinity, until the national council could meet. Accusations made in Church courts would not be enforceable by the secular arm. To be sure, Lippomano acknowledged the need for a secular arm, which he hoped would serve as a strong supporter of the Catholic Church. But he had disdain for it, too, believing only the Church should hold total jurisdiction over “sins against God.” He cited the corruption of Poland’s secular courts as a key argument for involving Catholic clergy and for giving them jurisdiction over not only religious but also certain criminal matters. According to Lippomano, this became clear during his October 16 meeting with King Sigismund August. Lippomano was trying to influence the king to expel the Jews from Sochaczew, “who have returned from the flight [after the trial] . . . as if they were absolved by a public verdict.” The king assured him that “justice will not fail,” but, at the same time, also noted that Jews expressed grief over what had happened, and bribed officials. The monarch thus wanted to know the truth about the affair. Lippomano, frustrated that the king seemingly had doubts about the affair, pointed to the public records of the trial that “demonstrated the truth of everything.” It was at that moment that Lippomano returned to the matter of ecclesiastic jurisdiction, suggesting that if the king “wanted to review the matters, he should put in charge a good person who will not be pulled by the Jews, and because a sin was committed principally against God, he should also assure that [in this matter] ecclesiastical individuals intervene.” The king apparently agreed. For Lippomano, corruption was not the only issue, or even the principal one. As in Verona, the principal issue was who should judge religious cases— one of which, the nuncio argued, was host desecration. At his meeting with the king, Lippomano may have been oblique about his goals, effectively duping the king into agreeing to ecclesiastical intervention in the matter of the Jews, but his suggestion to the monarch represented the larger goals he had set for Poland, as he had done earlier for his own diocese. In his long letter to Pope Paul IV, dated June 21, 1556, Lippomano informed the pope about the lamentable state of the Church in Poland and about the Sochaczew case, and stressed the gravity of the country’s political situation, especially the “troubles” caused by nobles’ efforts to limit the


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Church’s influence and jurisdiction. Lippomano longed to return to Italy, but he decided to stay on until the upcoming diet in order “not to abandon the Kingdom in its greatest need and leave it prey to the heretics.” By staying in Poland, he sought to ensure that certain crucial policies were passed. This could not be done without the help of the king and of the senators who remained faithful to the Church,but also, this could not be accomplished without two brevi from the pope, one addressed to the king and one to the Senate. Among the issues to be raised in the papal letters requested by Lippomano was an exhortation that “the laws of the Kingdom, established by their ancestors” be respected. Lippomano did not talk about all existing laws, but specifically laws “against heretics, which order that [the heretics] be expelled immediately, without so many meetings and ceremonies.” Also important to include in the letters, Lippomano continued, was that “above all they [the nobles] should give back to the bishops the jurisdiction, unjustly taken away from them, as they should not have done, nor had the authority to do so.” The struggle over ecclesiastical jurisdiction was part of a larger program to restore the authority of the Church in Poland and in Europe. The restoration would include restitution of the Catholic churches to their rightful owners, “tyrannically occupied by the heretics and nobles, their protectors,” and the expulsion from the kingdom of “all these accursed Picards, Servetians, . . . Osianders, Anabaptists, Lutherans, and all other pestilence raging here.” Lippomano’s list covered almost all major and minor Protestant groups and Protestant leaders condemned by the Catholic Church: “Picards” was an umbrella term referring to Waldensians, Hussites, Bohemian Brethren, and sometimes quite literally to a fifteenth-century sect from Picardy, whose leader called himself a New Adam; the Servetians were followers of Michael Servetus, an Aragonese thinker who embraced anti-Trinitarianism and, condemned by both Catholics and Protestants, was burned at the stake in Calvin’s Geneva in 1553; Osianders were supporters of the more radical Lutheran reformer and critic of accusations against Jews Andreas Osiander; and Anabaptists were a group of Protestants advocating adult baptism. When Lippomano was sent to Poland just a year earlier, he was charged with doing all he could to prevent the spread and legitimization of “heresy” there, as was already happening across the western border of Poland in the Holy Roman Empire, an expansion Lippomano knew well from his earlier missions. His mission did not bring immediate results and, in some areas,

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was an utter failure—the Catholic Church, for example, would not regain the same judicial authority within the state it had enjoyed before the Reformation; the legislation initiated on the eve of Lippomano’s visit at the 1555 diet became law during the 1560s. But Lippomano’s visit underscores how tenuous the religious and political situation in Poland was at the time, and how much Poland was at the center, not the periphery, of the Church’s struggle against the Reformation. Lippomano did not instigate the host desecration trial in Sochaczew, but he was happy to use the rumors about it on behalf of his investigation of a bishop suspected of heresy in the nearby town of Łowicz. In turn, the trial of the bishop undoubtedly influenced, if not inspired, the rumors of host desecration by Jews. Although the host desecration trial became a platform for Catholic-Protestant theological polemic, Sochaczew never became the site of a eucharistic cult, as did many places in Mark Brandenburg, Macklenburg, or even closer to home, in Poznań. The trial was a convenient temporary instrument for combating heretics and for regaining political influence. For Lippomano, as for his patron, Pope Paul IV, Jews were an inherent part of— and a useful tool in—the Catholic Church’s overall Counter-Reformation struggle.

m a p 2 Poznań. Mariah E. Reisner, Wesleyan University.

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

figur e 1 Strappado, or the rack, was a method of torture commonly used in Polish courts. Jodocus Damhouder Praxis rervm criminalivm iconibvs materiae svbiectae convenientibvsm (Antwerp: 1562), by permission from Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


figur e 2 The Poznań legend. Jews paying a Christian servant to obtain eucharistic wafers for them. Tomasz Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula: Quae in Ecclesia Posnaniensis Ordinis S. MARIAE Carmelitarum Divina bonitas operatae (n.p.: 1609), by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 3 The Poznań legend. The woman, with her daughter, stealing the hosts from a church of the Dominican friars in Poznań. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 4 The Poznań legend. Jews portrayed as desecrating the host in the cellar of the Świdwińska house. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 5 The Poznań legend. Jews taking the hosts outside the city to bury them in the marsh. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 6 The Poznań legend. The shepherd and his son witness the appearance of the three hosts. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 7 The Poznań legend. The shepherd before the magistrate. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 8 The Poznań legend. The bishop and the clergy retrieve the hosts from the pastures. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 9 The Poznań legend. The bishop authorizing the building of a chapel on the spot where the hosts had been found. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 10 The Poznań legend. King Władysław Jagiełło founds the Church of Corpus Christi. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 11 The Poznań legend. Jews “with the sacrilegious woman” burned at the stake. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).


figur e 12 The Poznań legend. The monstrance with miraculous hosts of Poznań. Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, by permission from the collection of Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (Poland).

Wunderblut zu Wilsnack; Niederdeutscher Einblattdruck mit 15 Holzschnitten aus der Zeit von 1510–1520 (Strassburg: Heitz, 1904).

figur e 13 A broadsheet depicting the legend of the miraculous host of Wilsnack, 1510–1520. Paul Heitz and Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, Das



figur e 14 Detail from Heitz and Schreiber, Das Wunderblut zu Wilsnack.


figur e 15 Moses with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, while Jesus, “the Savior of the World,” gazes from above. Jan Achacy Kmita, Process Sprawy Bochenskiej z Zydami o Naświętszey Eucharystiey Sakrament od Zydow y Świętokradców Kupiony y Cudownie Okazany (n.p., after 1606), title page verso. From the collection of and by permission from the Zakład im. Ossolińskich in Wrocław (Poland).

6 Christians on Trial, Jews Expelled

In the spring of 1600 in Bochnia, then a leading but declining salt-producing city just 40 km east of Cracow, two Christian men, Mathias Dudka and Maciej Mazur, stood before the city magistrate, accused of host desecration. Their trial became freighted with political consequence, its full scope evident only in 1605, when King Sigismund III issued a decree ordering that Jews be expelled from the city. Many moved to the nearby private town of Wiśnicz, owned by a prominent nobleman, Stanisław Lubomirski. The expulsion was an unusual act for Poland, touted by a local writer as a unique success that had joined a list of late medieval expulsions from imperial cities, among them Wittenberg, Nuremberg, and Strasburg. Like all such trials, the trial in Bochnia reveals the power of belief in the divine nature of the Eucharist, and the awareness of thieves on trial that stealing the host was a grave sin against God. The trial also reveals popular awareness of the host desecration legend’s anti-Jewish motif, which could be exploited for personal and political reasons. Local economy and politics were at the center of the Bochnia affair, but the Protestant Reformation and Catholic restoration were still relevant to it; the title page of one of the trialinspired anti-Jewish pamphlets speaks of “ungrateful Jews and Arians.”

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Songs and tales may have spread the word of the trial, perhaps inspiring some copycat thefts. Much like the first host desecration trial of the Jews in 1556 in Sochaczew and despite pamphlets published in its aftermath, the Bochnia trial did not arouse a eucharistic cult, nor did it persist for long in the town’s collective memory. The Marian cult that emerged in Bochnia in the first quarter of the seventeenth century seems not to have been related to it at all, and was understood at the time to have been established to strengthen a Catholicism weakened in Bochnia by the Reformation. Still, the trial’s consequences were manifest for centuries to come in Bochnia, and decades later in Przemyśl, during another trial.

“The Most Atrocious Crime of Sacrilege” in Bochnia On Saturday, April 8, 1600, a Christian man, Mathias Dudka, appeared voluntarily before the city council of Bochnia to confess to a sacrilege he had committed a year before. He “lamented” that on the Thursday or Friday before Easter the previous year, Maciej Mazur, a loader in the salt mine, “had persuaded him to get the Most Holy Sacrament from the priest and deliver it to him.”  At first, Dudka had expressed misgivings, until Mazur reminded him that he had borrowed a valuable sword and had promptly lost it; Mazur promised to forget about the sword and the resulting debt of two red złotys (worth 120 groszy, a huge amount considering that the daily wage for an unskilled worker like Dudka was around 3–4 groszy). He also offered Dudka additional money “so you can buy a small garden for your sustenance.” But, even then, Dudka protested that stealing a consecrated wafer was “a great sin.” Mazur responded reassuringly, “I will take it onto my own conscience,” and proceeded to give directions on how to steal the host easily. Dudka would receive the host on his tongue carefully, so that it would not stick to the roof of his mouth; then he would “leave the church promptly without drinking from the chalice” and deliver the host to Mazur near a salt mine shaft not far from the church. Dudka told the council he had done exactly that; “on the Holy Saturday I went to church, and having received the sacrament I did as he had taught me, but leaving the church two men appeared to me, I became terrified and almost dropped [the host].” When he “gathered strength,” he delivered the host, taking it from his mouth and placing it on Mazur’s palm. “I had sinned against my Lord Creator,” Dudka said to the council. God had prompted him to confess because “my conscience was eating

chr ist i a ns on tr i a l, jews e x pell ed

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me and Lord God did not grant me anything but poverty and tormented me with sickness, which I can bear no more.” He went to confession and revealed his dark secret, whereupon the priest urged him to go to the magistrate and confess again, effectively transforming his sin into a crime. Dudka “was ready to be punished,” even “to be burned to dust.” Dudka’s testimony revealed the power of a personal belief in God, in divine punishment, and, ultimately, in God’s presence in the consecrated wafer. Dudka’s sense of his grave sin “against Lord Creator” led him to believe in a divine intervention in the form of two men, whom he took to be divine emissaries sent to stop him from sinning, as well as in the subsequent suffering that led him to accept and embrace the punishment that would redeem his soul— even torture and death. The instructions Dudka claimed to have received from Mazur were perplexing, including the timing. Dudka said that he had taken Communion on Holy Saturday, the Saturday before Easter, but that was a day when Communion is not given in Catholic churches; and one juror inquired if he had meant the Saturday before Palm Sunday. Even more strikingly, Dudka said that Mazur had instructed him to leave the church “without drinking from the chalice,” but from the Middle Ages on, drinking from the chalice was a privilege granted solely to the clergy, with the laity receiving only the wafer. Yet no court official seems to have questioned this significant and inconsistent detail. If Mazur was a Protestant, drinking from the chalice might not have seemed strange, and there were still Protestants in Bochnia at the time. Some royal managers of the salt mines were avid Protestants; one, Hieronim Bużeński (who died in 1580), is said to have expelled Catholic priests from churches in his domains, installing Calvinist ministers in their place. As a result, many “ex-priests” had found a home in Bochnia. It is also possible that, with a Protestant presence, Bochnia may have had a local custom of offering the chalice to laity, despite canons of the Council of Trent that strictly forbade that practice, condemning anyone who promoted it. If certain unauthorized rituals were indeed performed in Bochnia, this might explain why no member of the city council or the court questioned Mazur’s unusual instruction. Mazur, who was present at Dudka’s hearing, protested the charge against himself, saying that he had no need for the host and, moreover, if he “had had a need for it, I could have done it myself, without telling anyone.” He said that Dudka had implicated him out of spite and “hatred” because “I did not allow him to work with me in the salt-mine, because he had dropped a large block of

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salt on me several times,” nearly killing him. In view of “the terrible things insulting Lord Jesus Christ the Savior of the whole world,” the court postponed its deliberations from Saturday until the following Monday and, in the interim, imprisoned both men. On Monday, Dudka confirmed his earlier testimony and pleaded with the council to punish both him and “the man who had persuaded him to do it.” The court stated that Dudka offered “to be voluntarily subjected to torture.” In light of the discrepancy between Mazur’s and Dudka’s testimonies and the seriousness of the charge, which “smelled of criminal offense,” the council referred the case to the city’s criminal court. Just as he had done before the council, Dudka affirmed his guilt before the jurors in the criminal trial and, revealing deep religious beliefs, offered his life as proof of his claims: “I prefer to suffer and expiate [my sin] here than have Lord God punish my soul or take vengeance on my children.” Mazur continued his denial: “God knows I am not guilty,” and added, “may God let the devil take my body and soul.” Noting the “Satanic” comments, the court dispatched Mazur to torture, where he cursed and continued to maintain his innocence: “I am giving myself to the Devil . . . don’t torture my body, I am not guilty, I know nothing.” The following day, Mazur taunted the court: “Let them torture me, I will say anything that comes to mind.” The court officials, assuming a spiritual role, urged him to “confess his sin” because now “only Lord’s mercy may save your soul.” Mazur asked to be released from torture and “promised to tell the truth.” Jews now entered the story. Mazur “confessed” that Jacob, a Jewish slaughterer and moneylender who lived next door to him, had asked him to obtain and deliver “the sacrament” to him. Mazur said under torture that Jacob had promised him a reward and agreed to lend him money in the future and without collateral. He said that he had been tempted, though aware that the request was “a great sin,” and asked Dudka’s help, believing the act “would be a lesser sin.” Mazur “confirmed” that Dudka had indeed obtained the host on Holy Saturday and delivered it that day. On the next day, Easter Sunday, Mazur in turn had given the host, wrapped in a piece of paper, to Jacob, who asked him to place it on a platter. Jacob had insisted that he promise never to discuss the event with anyone, and Mazur claimed that this was the reason he had first denied the entire episode, even under torture. Shocked by the charges, the court postponed its deliberations again, and on the following Monday, Mazur once more denied everything he had confessed: “If I confessed to anything, that was because of torture.” Dudka, in


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contrast, stuck to his version of the events. Mazur was sent back to the torture chamber, put on the rack, and stretched twice; his body was then soaked in alcohol and burned with candles, but he continued his denial. Mazur lost consciousness; when he was brought down from the rack, he reverted to his second account, saying that he had given the host to Jacob, “the Jewish dog.” He told the court that he was now telling the truth and was willing to die for it, taking his oath in the presence of many prominent persons, including some royal officials. The court was on the verge of issuing a decree in “this ungodly affair offending Lord God Almighty and His Most Sacred Majesty Himself,” when present royal officials protested that cases of this sort must be reviewed by the king, and that, in the meantime, the court must provide the prisoners with medicine and food. More than a year later in July 1601, a royal decree ordered Mathias Dudka’s execution, but Mazur had died in prison of his wounds. The next month, the court summoned Dudka, who confirmed once more his version of the events. He was sentenced to death by burning; Mazur’s body was ordered burned at the stake following Dudka’s execution. According to surviving court records, the affair appears to have ended there. The king’s decree included not a word about Jews. Several court settlements that year suggest that Mazur’s wife was brought to court because of debts she and Mazur had contracted. She sold her house and borrowed some money, seeking to protect her dowry to support her children and herself. The official records indicate nothing unusual; real estate transactions and debt payments between Jews and Christians appear, along with occasional cases of Jews suing Christians for debts. It seemed nothing was out of the ordinary about the financial transactions; that is, until January 1603, when the king donated, iure caduco (by the law of forfeiture), the property of Jacob, the Jew implicated by Mazur, and also the property of Jacob Frączka and Izaak Jozephowicz Wronka, Jacob’s guarantors, to a nobleman named Severinus Krosnowski. Krosnowski, oddly, did not register this royal donation until 1606, when he sold the property to Albertus Bochenski. It is unclear why Krosnowski delayed this registration or why there was a property transfer at all, but the decree’s use of the term iure caduco implies that the Jews’ property had been deemed to be “without a lawful owner,” because the Jews in question had disappeared, and thus their property, appropriately, was available to be absorbed by the royal treasury. Why this particular nobleman benefited is unknown, possibly for unstated political reasons.

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Sources from 1605 and 1606 reveal events that must have occurred soon after the trial ended in 1601. Apparently, when Jacob left Bochnia, the Jewish elders explained he had left on business. In any case, he did not return, and some local Christians took that to mean he had fled, thereby, an admission of his guilt. Two community elders, Izaak Jozephowicz Wronka and Jacob Frączka, who were to be guarantors of his return and face punishment if he did not come back, also left Bochnia, it seems, sometime during the trial or the year after. A later literary account by Jan Achacy Kmita, a town official known for his funeral poetry and panegyrics inspired by Greek mythology, says the two elders left only after they had enlisted Nicolas Borzymowski, a nobleman and an official in the Bochnia magistrate, as their guardian and representative before royal officials; by doing so, they had passed the responsibility to Borzymowski. According to one royal edict, the two Jews had gone to Turkey, but Kmita implied that they probably stayed in Poland and were protected by other Jews: “A crow will not pick the eyes of another crow.” In court, the king and royal officials considered the departure to be an admission of guilt, with the rest of the Jewish community now to be held responsible for their return. In 1604, the city’s chief magistrate, Albertus Woida, charged Stanislaus Ochota with insulting him in public because Ochota bore a grudge for some forty groszy that Woida had asked him to pay. One day, Ochota, apparently “loudly in the presence of honest people,” declared Woida “a servant to the Jews, to Jacob; a traitor against the city; a thief who tells Jews whatever he hears in the city hall,” and not worthy of holding public office. Hearing the case, the court decreed that Ochota must swear he did not remember what he had said in a drunken stupor against Woida, and that, in fact, he had nothing against him. He was sentenced to pay a fine. Woida appears to have represented Jews before the court on numerous occasions, including in property litigations after their 1605 expulsion, so there may have been some grounds for Ochota's complaint. Soon after the trial, but before expulsion of the Jews, Bochnia suffered from the plague; for Jan Achacy Kmita, it was yet one more example of divine punishment on Bochnians for their failure to prosecute Jews. The plague must have damaged the city’s prosperity even more deeply, perhaps inspiring additional decisive actions against the Jews. By 1605, tensions in the city had become so high that the burghers appealed to the king, ostensibly to compel Bochnia Jews to assure the return of the fugitive “author of


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the crime,” and Jacob’s two guarantors, Frączka and Wronka, whose property had been handed over to Krosnowski two years before. To explain Jacob’s failure to return, Jews cited reports that he had been killed in Walachia, producing letters from a Walachian toll collector said to have witnessed his death, but their explanation was rejected and the king ordered Bochnia Jews to search for and produce the three fugitives in court by mid-November or face expulsion from the city. By the deadline, the Jews had failed their assigned task, whereupon the king ordered their expulsion; they had twelve weeks to liquidate their property and were prohibited from settling within a two-mile radius of Bochnia. Court records for those next twelve weeks reflect frantic efforts by Jews to sell real estate, houses, gardens, and fields. Ironically, all transactions followed the established formula for real estate contracts that the seller was non compulsus, that is, not forced and under no pressure or pain, but “spontaneous” in the decision to sell. The decree stated that any Jew failing to liquidate property would be considered to have “abandoned” it, with that property, iure caduco, becoming part of the king’s own treasury. At the end of the twelve weeks, on February 15, 1606, members of the Bochnia city council toured the Jewish neighborhood to inspect the houses of “the wicked Jews” (iudaeorum scelestorum) to see if they all had indeed left town. They determined “diligently” that “not one of the Bochnia Jews was found” in the houses sold, and they registered their findings in the council’s official records. Some Jews settled in Wiśnicz, a privately owned town just 5 km away, barely beyond the restricted distance. Others went to another private town, Tarnów, some 45 km to the east; and still others to Kazimierz, a suburb of Cracow and a major Jewish center. The councilmen might have considered that the end of the affair, but it was not to be. The expulsion of the Jews had complicated the lives of many Christians because Jews were closely interwoven, at least economically, with the Christian population. Bochnia Jews lent money to Christians and borrowed from them; hence, mutual debts were now threatened. In July 1606, after an appeal from the city’s burghers, the king issued an order to settle such debts by the feast of St. Martin on November 11. Jews must have continued to socialize with Christians, who now acted as their hosts. At the end of August, the council forbade anyone to accept “disgraceful Jews and other vagabonds” in their homes under the penalty of ten Polish złotys. In October, some Bochnia salt miners attacked Jewish travelers lodging in an inn

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near the city, and stole some money. A skirmish erupted; some Christians drinking at the inn’s tavern tried to defend the Jews, but one was killed. When the Jews went to Bochnia’s court to pursue criminal charges, the court confined the miners “in a squalid jail,” and then decided the affair was an aftermath of heavy drinking, “not a criminal but a civil case.”  Jewish travelers to Cracow from Tarnów or Wiśnicz could not conveniently bypass Bochnia, and since they continued to be harassed by Christian hooligans, among them miners and students, the Jews decided to pay a ransom fee (a kozubales ) to buy peace. Later, Jews from the nearby town of Wiśnicz paid similar fees to a Bochnia parish church, hoping for long-term protection. These protection fees were in effect until the end of the eighteenth century.

Contested Property Left Behind In the wake of the expulsion, the former Jewish neighborhood in Bochnia became Christian, and was gradually entirely rebuilt. The city council, which had been dependent on Jewish contributions— especially in cash and prized spices, like saffron and pepper—now tried to force Christians inhabiting Jewish houses to provide similar contributions, including the spices. Two years later, these new owners appealed to the king to relieve them formally from “Jewish” obligations, and the king ordered the chief magistrate, Stanisław Morski, and the council to cease demanding that the Christians supply “saffron and pepper.”  The lawful ownership of some Jewish houses was also a matter of controversy. The sale of some was contested because of debts that had been contracted outside of Bochnia, with these houses used as security. But it was ownership of the synagogue, the adjacent buildings, and the Jewish cemetery that proved most difficult to resolve. On April 25, 1606, just a little more than two months after the Jews had been forced to leave, King Sigismund III issued a decree rebuking the magistrate of Bochnia for failing to protect Jewish property and Jews who were traveling through Bochnia, and ordering the magistrate to do so “out of the duty of his office.” The decree said that Jews had appeared before the king lamenting that Bochnia’s Christians persecuted them as they passed through the town and that their synagogue and two houses near it had been “disassembled,” with wood from them stolen for use in buildings elsewhere. The records suggest that the king’s decree was not registered until two years later, in 1608, the year a certain nobleman and


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low-level royal official, Caspar Naygodth, laid claims to part of the area in dispute, including buildings around the synagogue and also the cemetery. Naygodth had registered, before the court, a privilege granted by the king for full right of ownership to property formerly owned by a prominent Jew, Jacob Brytan, as well as the right of ownership to the synagogue and two adjacent structures. According to the claim, the king had assumed the right of ownership iure caduco, as an abandoned property to be turned over to the royal treasury. A document— supposedly dated January 9, 1606, thus more than a month before the final deadline for the Jews’ departure—had been filed in 1608, along with the April 1606 decree ordering the magistrate to protect Jewish property and any Jews passing through town. The document of January 9 was said to be a Polish translation of a writ in Hebrew (iudaico idiomate), adorned with official seals and signatures from six officials of the Bochnia Jewish community. The document stated that full ownership of “the synagogue with all surrounding structures, two houses belonging to this synagogue, and the cemetery with adjacent land” were unanimously granted to Stanisław Morski, the royal administrator of Bochnia, and to his offspring. Stanisław Fischer, a local historian of Bochnia, noting that the document might have been forged, pointed to a phrase in the text describing Jews as “once living in Bochnia.”  Jews did not leave the town until February 15. Fischer may not have been the first to suspect fraud. In 1610, Andreas Gorączko, accused of writing a libellus against Stanisław Morski, charged in the context of the dispute over the synagogue that “the chief magistrate has conspired with Jews.”  Whether or not it was a forgery, the donation to Morski did raise questions of legal ownership of the property and land. If the Jews had, in fact, donated their communal property to Morski before they left Bochnia, the land and whatever was left of the structures on it could not have been considered abandoned and thus could not be subject to ius caducum (the law of forfeiture), and could not be eligible for appropriation by the king. If this suggested scenario was true, the property was granted to Naygodth unlawfully. If the document was a forgery, and the Jews had neither sold nor donated the property by February 15, 1606, it would have legally become part of the royal treasury and thus a donation to Naygodth would have been legal. The matter became more complicated when Naygodth sold the property to a person named Irasowski. In a back-and-forth between the sides, each claimed a higher right to the property; at stake were the authority of the

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king, on the one hand, and the authority of legal documentation, on the other. Morski argued that the Jews’ donation to him had preceded the king’s donation to Naygodth. Irasowski countered by asking whose document was more important, “from Jews who had no right to this property after they were expelled, or from His Majesty the King?”  In 1616, someone donated the property in question to the Dominican order in Bochnia, but Jews from Kazimierz bought it back, though without the right of use, for the price of saffron, pepper, and ginger. “Virtual ownership” of Bochnia’s Jewish sacred spaces by the Jews of Kazimierz might have been behind the city’s efforts to reaffirm the decree of expulsion of Jews by subsequent kings. Stanisław Fischer has noted that the decree was confirmed in 1669 by King Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki and reinscribed in the city’s council records in the 1770s. Jews themselves did not to return to Bochnia until 1863, 257 years after their expulsion.

Religious Polemic in Jan Achacy Kmita’s Pamphlets Though Jews were expelled from the town and their presence in Bochnia literally erased as Christians appropriated their houses and destroyed the synagogue, Jan Achacy Kmita, a Bochnia town official, made sure that the case was not forgotten. Kmita published a rhymed account of the trial and its aftermath in a small booklet, adorned on the front page with Hebrew words: emet (truth) and a verse from a psalm, hetivah YHWH letovim, “Do good, O Lord, to the good.”  (Bibliographers, relying on the misleading date of 1602 on the title page, have assumed that the booklet was printed that year, but internal textual evidence suggests 1606 at the earliest.) Embellished with religious rhetoric and some added details, Kmita’s account demonstrates the relationship between official records and unofficial memory in self-conscious attempts to make events “known to posterity” through literature. Kmita’s work captures details and the dynamic of commemoration, and construction of a narrative and “usable past,” a version of the past that can propel to action. The title page reveals Kmita’s purpose: to provide an account of the events “for chroniclers” who would include the story in Bochnia in their own works. And although the booklet has been portrayed as an example of early modern Polish “anti-Semitic” literature, the title page and its reference to Jews and “Arians,” the Polish anti-Trinitarians, suggest that its intent was somewhat different: “This booklet, while unwelcome [niewdzięczna] among Jews


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and Arians who scorn what happens in God’s school, will be pleasing to pious Christians.” Kmita drew potential readers’ attention to “the Most Holy Sacrament bought by sacrilegious Jews” and to the “miraculous revelation” of the crime. But for him, the book was about emet: the truth about the sacrament of Eucharist that had been contested during the Reformation. To some Polish historians, the Bochnia affair is an outlier in the tales of host desecration because men instead of women were accused of being intermediaries and stealing the host for Jews. It is true that women were more often portrayed in such tales as principal, and easily corruptible, Christian collaborators with Jews; and it is also true that from among the trials for sacrilege, women were more often accused of stealing the Communion wafer for healing or magical purposes. Nonetheless, in earlier versions of the legend— for example, as in Passau, Enns, or Breslau—men did appear as principals. More important, at least in early modern Poland, men charged with breaking into churches and bringing the loot to Jews for purchase were accused of sacrilege more frequently than women. Hence, Kmita’s story line was not all that unusual, and likely also not troubling. What did seem to trouble Kmita was the lack of obvious miracles occurring after, and in response to, Bochnia’s sacrilege. To buttress the divine presence in the Eucharist, Kmita seems to have embellished the story with minor miracles and insinuations of miracles. Although the primary impetus behind the expulsion of the Jews from Bochnia seems to have been economic, as Kmita himself admitted, his booklet has an undeniable tone of religious polemic and apologetic. Its anti-Jewish rhetoric, like that in many other publications at the time, also had the Reformation and, especially, the anti-Trinitarians in mind. This is perhaps not surprising since Bochnia was not immune to new religious ideas, located as it was on a major trade route in a region known for powerful nobles who embraced either Calvinism or even anti-Trinitarianism (known in Poland as Arianism). Neither Arians nor other Protestants appear again explicitly in the booklet, but Kmita mentioned them in his New Jericho, and referred to Anabaptists in another booklet, a fictional letter of Polish Jews addressed to the Messiah. Kmita’s story of the Bochnia affair affirms Trinitarian Christianity, as does the woodcut on the verso of the title page in which Jesus, in his left hand a globus cruciger (cross-bearing orb) marking him as salvator mundi (savior of the world), gazes down from heaven onto Moses, who grasps tablets with the Ten Commandments in pseudo-Hebrew (see fig. 15). The

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booklet seeks to reinforce the authority of the Catholic Church and its teachings of “the true Body of Christ.” With the story of Dudka and Mazur at the fore, it seems in effect to be a popular treatise on the attributes of the Eucharist. Kmita’s dichotomous imagery contrasted Dudka and Mazur, as “sacrilegious” men, with truly pious Christians. Dudka “took the sacrament sacrilegiously,” Kmita wrote, whereas many other Christians took theirs “to receive forgiveness for their sins and the redemption of their souls.” Those who especially deserved redemption and forgiveness received Communion, “believing that in this bread they were given not only His Body but also His Blood.” According to Kmita, reasons for receiving the host were wide-ranging: some were attracted to Communion “by the love of God that delights each pious man”; others wanted to receive the host much as a sick man welcomed a physician; some, hounded by a dark conscience, sought the sacrament to be purified; and still others believed it would relieve their worries and deliver them from evil. Citing his own list of motivations for receiving Communion, Kmita reiterated that the host was “indeed the Body of the Living God, [offered] so that we can receive His Spirit in our souls and be transformed by His goodness.” The Mass and Communion were reminders to Christians of Christ’s passion, suffered, in his goodness, for “our redemption”; Kmita urged his readers to see “in this bread the Truth of the Body [and] the power of mercy.” Although the “bread” offered in this sacrament seems on the surface to be “bread” that might be nibbled on by a mouse, in “truth,” from this “bread” deep faith “in the Body [of God] is born.” For Kmita there was the form and the matter. Reminiscent of medieval Christian debates over the nature of the Eucharist, in his view, matter that seemed to some humans only “bread” embodied the truth about Christ’s body and blood. Dudka, who “received [the sacrament] treacherously like Judas, who shamelessly betrayed the Lord,” had been fooled by “Satan.” He carried from the church “God in his mouth, not in his heart.” But God did not accept this “betrayal” and, seeking to change Dudka’s heart, had sent him the two elderly male figures. Dudka’s soul could see them, but no one else could; he “stubbornly” passed them by. “Ungrateful” and rejecting “God’s kindness,” he proceeded on to meet Mazur. Dudka took “the sacrament out of his treacherous mouth” and gave it to Mazur, who wrapped it in a piece of paper and took “this Sacred Offering to this scoundrel [Jacob, the Jewish slaughterer and moneylender].” In a lyrical account of the attributes of the host, Kmita told


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how Mazur “sold God’s Body . . . a medicine for the sick, a nourishment for a pilgrim. This bread, which has become God through Lord’s word, strengthens the weak and keeps the faithful healthy. With this Body men become humbler . . . , stronger at work, and desiring God’s love . . . , ready to be obedient . . . [and] to give thanks to the Most Holy God because he who receives this Body in this bread, receives the Lord who sits in heaven.”  Kmita continued, “Through this host virtues multiply, and those who received it achieve glory. This bread washes away daily sins, and protects men from future disasters. With this bread mortal sins are absolved. [This bread] is beneficial to those who receive it.” Yet, “this bread” can be harmful to those with “evil intentions”; for example, when Dudka “treacherously” took the host and gave it to Mazur, he then suffered in body and soul. In collaboration with Mazur, he “gave it to Christ’s enemies, in contempt for the Holy Church.” Kmita emphasized that Dudka’s affliction was God’s intervention. “For the Lord in heaven did not want to hide his injury anymore; he did not want to dishonor the Church,” and thus influenced Dudka to reveal what had happened. Overtaken by sickness, realizing “the treason against God” he had committed, seeing a divine apparition that encouraged him not “to lose his soul, because God is a Living God, who always stretches out his hand to the condemned,” and to “reveal the sin tormenting his soul,”  Dudka went to confession “half-alive.” “Because the Son’s Bread may not be given to unworthy dogs,” the priest who heard his confession denied Dudka the sacrament, but the parish priest himself brought it to Dudka. Receiving it, this time worthily after a proper confession of sins, Dudka was healed. No longer tormented by the “evil deed he had committed against God and the Church,” Dudka decided to confess to the magistrate, transforming his “sin” into a “crime,” and was ready to be punished. Unafraid to die because his soul had been saved by “the Lord’s blood,” he knew “it was not a matter between him and the people but between him and God.”  Paralleling the court records, Kmita related in his account that in contrast to Dudka, Mazur had denied everything, even under torture. “The common people sent prayers to God, begging him to reveal the [truth] about the investigation,” but Mazur continued to deny his participation. It became apparent “that the devil controlled what the tortured man was to say.” The court ordered his hair and beard shaved so “he may confess to the treacherous crime,” and Mazur did confess “that he sold the Sacrament with his unworthy hands to Jacob, the Jew.” The court records indicate that Mazur died in prison after excessive torture, but in Kmita’s account, he was poisoned by Jews.

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In the absence of a momentous miracle, akin to those found in other tales of host desecration, Kmita attempted to anchor his narrative in smaller miracles; he constructed a tale of the power of God in the Eucharist and the eternal struggle between God and the devil. Dudka confessed to his “crime” because he repented; Mazur did not, and continued to deny it until the prayers of the “common people” were heard and the culprit was shaved to remove any hiding place for the devil. “In this confession honest people’s power was manifest and may this true tale be [remembered] by posterity.”  Kmita searched for “God’s intervention” anywhere he could. When, fearing for their own lives, the Jews of Bochnia appealed for help to Nicolas Borzymowski, a nobleman and once a chief magistrate; Kmita blamed the nobleman for derailing Dudka’s and Mazur’s initial executions and for requesting royal intervention.Borzymowski seemingly had come to be held responsible for the flight of Jews during Dudka’s and Mazur’s trial, and hence was summoned before the court at the Sejm, the Polish diet, but he died before he could appear. Kmita saw this as a sign of God’s punishment. It is unclear whether Borzymowski was a Catholic or Protestant, or perhaps even an Arian; Kmita said nothing about that one way or another, though he did emphasize the Catholicism of officials who condemned Mazur and Dudka. In this trial between “faith and law,” faith turned out to have the upper hand. Jews had come to court armed with privileges from kings and popes and had marshaled legal evidence, but in the end they did not succeed. Faith and “true” Christian law won, for no law—“royal, imperial, or ecclesiastical”— left unpunished the “betrayal of God in this bread.”  Kmita predictably accused Jews of bribery, of enmity against God and against Christians. “You bribed the jurors,” he wrote, “You scoundrels have a dog’s heart set against God and us.”  He turned to biblical figures to show that Jews’ hands were “filled with innocent blood and treason,” and to demonstrate “Jews’ inability” to see true divine message from Abel through Enoch, Noah, and Isaiah to “Christ the Savior of all creation, whom you scorned and then killed.” Kmita maintained that God had sent signs against Jews, recounting monstrous births among Jews in Bochnia just years before Mazur convinced Dudka to steal the host. Two Bochnia Jewesses had given birth to monsters: Kmita claimed that the wife of none other than Izaak Wronka, one of the Jewish guarantors for Jacob’s return, had borne a piglet, followed by “an ugly turkey”; and the daughter of Jacob Frączka, the second guarantor, had borne a monstrous child with rabbit teeth.


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In early modern Europe, “monstrous” births were taken as God’s punishment for sins and as a warning to repent to avert God’s further punishment. Such births were also used in religious polemic because, as noted by Jennifer Spinks, they were “richly symbolic and capable of conveying meaning in religious, political, and social spheres.” Indeed, after the Reformation, at least in Germany, monstrosities characterized “a new discourse of religious anxieties.” In Catholic anti-Lutheran polemic, Katherine von Bora, Luther’s wife, was portrayed as a sow giving birth to piglets, an image adapted from an anti-Jesuit Protestant publication. The Catholic printer Johann Nas pointed to the frequency of monstrous births in Lutheran lands and graphically represented “a band of Protestant monstrous births” in one of his polemical broadsheets. R. Po-chia Hsia writes that, in Germany, Jewish monstrous births had escaped anti-Jewish rhetoric. Yet, in 1575 in Protestant Strasbourg, Bernhard Jobin printed a polemical pamphlet against Jews with a woodcut portraying a Jewish woman near Augsburg giving birth to two piglets, a miracle proving “the stubborn blindness of the Jews in refusing to recognize Christ.” Also for Kmita, “monsters” born to Jewish women in Bochnia confirmed God’s hand in the Bochnia affair, as well as Jews’ need for the Eucharist and hence their guilt. Even though the Eucharist had the power to heal the afflicted, Kmita wrote, and even though Jews might have desired the body of Christ, they could not grasp in full the “essence [of the Eucharist] . . . a strange thing to everyone,” because the bread did not have the “shape of the body, nor does it have its size.” Jews “still today torment His body,” which they “acquire cunningly”; but, though they think they torment the body, they had bought “only bread” as seen “outwardly,” for “this body” is not discernible to the senses and hence cannot be seen or touched. The sacrament is the most sacred thing, incomprehensible to human reason; only through faith could one comprehend the power of the eucharistic bread. The bread was not “the flour cake of the minhah [offering] found in the Old Testament,” but “the God of Isaiah hidden in disguise,” and therefore to be worshipped in whatever form He comes. Kmita reiterated that “each sacrament consists of two [aspects], the matter and the form, just as the Church teaches. The bread is the matter, but the form is in the words the priest pronounces.” Kmita compared the eucharistic bread to the miracle of manna, but added that the eucharistic bread “feeds the soul.” He sternly reminded his Christian readers: “Listen, each and everyone [wszelki gminie], may it be known everywhere that . . . no law,

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imperial, Polish, or ecclesiastical will let anyone live who viciously betrays our Savior, who gave his most sacred Body, now hidden in bread.” He encouraged everyone to attend the execution of Dudka “so that you may remember how to love God and honor the sacraments of the Church.” Kmita’s commitment to Catholicism and his almost protonationalist attitudes identifying Polishness with Catholicism come through in some of his other works, especially his Lives of the Polish Kings, where he mocked early pagan “Polish” rulers who “worshipped a false God,” and spoke disparagingly of the French, Germans, Turks, and Ruthenians “of doubtful faith.” He did not have much good to say, either, of King Sigismund August, under whose rule “many different faiths spread in Poland.” But Kmita had not shown interest in Jews in any of his literary work before the Bochnia trial and the expulsion of the Jews. Only in the wake of the events leading up to expulsion did he begin to publish anti-Jewish works, perhaps seeking to exploit the events financially or possibly out of antipathy, seeking to “expose” Jewish beliefs as inimical to Christianity and ridiculous. In 1610, Kmita addressed a twelve-page pamphlet entitled Talmud or the Jewish Faith to Marek, a fictional rabbi from Prague, to whom he sought to reveal the Jews’ “true teachings.” He assured the fictional rabbi that not all Jews were treacherous; some were learned and “not false doctors.” He hoped that, through this book, the rabbi, “a friend of God . . . not without reason,” would “see the truth and give up the teachings of the Talmud.” He related a caricature of Jewish teachings, discussing God’s daily activities: prayers against Christians, “which Jewish men say in Hebrew and women in German”; blasphemies against “Mary and the most Sacred Sacrament, which they call a filthy offering”; and other rituals, including those for women in childbed, not all of them entirely incorrect. His booklet of the host desecration trial may not have been popular since it was not republished, but his Talmud or the Jewish Faith was published at least three times—twice during his lifetime, in 1610 and an expanded edition in 1622, and in a 1642 republication of the 1610 version. In 1615, Kmita also published New Jericho, an imaginary account of a Jewish messianic era, in which Jews would take over Poland and seek revenge for past mistreatment by Christians. The booklet spoke of Jews’ preparations for the coming of the Messiah in Kazimierz, near Cracow, because Jerusalem was in Turkish hands, many Jews already lived in Kazimierz, and the others, he predicted, would come soon. Jews had bought a large plaza for this mass arrival, transforming Kazimierz into a new Jericho—this was a symbolic


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reference; in the biblical account, Jericho was the Israelites’ first victory on entering Canaan after forty years of wandering in the desert, but it was completely destroyed. According to Kmita, the Messiah would settle in Kazimierz, reward those who had been friendly to Jews, and punish those who had harassed them; some would be beheaded, while others, like the Catholic students who frequently attacked Jews, would be circumcised. Jesuits would be spared, for they left Jews alone. The nobles “we will turn into kings, and we will become nobles,” but “burghers will have to till the soil, because we will compel them,” said Kmita, using “a Jewish voice,” and Christians will “have to serve us for as many years as we have been under their authority in exile. . . . We will take the best offices for ourselves.” In another booklet, in which Kmita depicted Jews as taking over Kazimierz, a local priest said that the only way to ensure “more Christians than Jews” in Kazimierz would be to convert Jews. Kmita’s anti-Jewish booklets reveal anxiety about Jewish economic and political prominence in Poland. Despite his discussion of religious problems in the wake of the Reformation, Kmita understood well that religion was not the sole factor behind the Bochnia affair.

Salt, Trade, and Jews—Bochnia’s Economic Crisis “Many Jews settled in Bochnia,” wrote Kmita, in a rhymed version of the affair published soon after the expulsion, for “it is their delight to impoverish, to destroy men.” At the turn of the seventeenth century, Bochnia, the once premier salt-producing town, was on the decline, in part, because of the gradual decrease in salt production after the mine became overexploited and dangerous, with some chambers and shafts near collapse. In 1579, a principal shaft named Sutoris almost did collapse. A year later, a fire killed about thirty miners. The situation was so dire that the Sejm appointed a commission to review the state of the salt mines. Still, another fire occurred in 1587. There were protests and strikes among the mine workers and, in 1600, a strike of carriers that led to violence. Maciej Mazur, one of the two Christians accused in the host desecration trial, had worked as a mine loader there; whether he was involved in the unrest is unknown. With the deterioration of mining conditions, the quantity of salt produced in Bochnia dropped dramatically and the town began to lose its share of the market to a sister salt mine in nearby Wieliczka. In 1527, both mines had produced approximately sixteen thousand barrels; Bochnia’s share was

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about seven thousand barrels, or approximately 43 percent of the total. By 1571, Bochnia’s share had dropped below five thousand barrels, to 20 percent. Nonetheless, Bochnia’s obligation to the monarch was established at five hundred barrels, half of that of Wieliczka, which was more productive and now dominating the market. It was clearly a disproportionate rate. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Bochnia mine could no longer produce high-quality large crystals. With the decline of salt production, trade in general also decreased. Jews in Bochnia had been prominent distributors of salt and long-distance merchants; perhaps Bochnia’s decline had prompted Kmita to write of the Jews’ desire “to ruin men.” Jews also engaged in the sometimes illegal sale of alcohol, and in moneylending. Tensions between Jews and Christians already had arisen in the late sixteenth century over the sale of meat; Christian butchers complained about competition from Jews, who were said to slaughter more animals than their own consumption required, selling the remaining meat to Christians to the detriment of Christian butchers. Christian butchers claimed that they also were burdened by offerings insisted on by local churches and lords, a duty of which Jews apparently had been relieved. In 1583, King Stefan Batory ordered Jewish butchers to share that burden and stipulated limits of cattle and fowl that could be slaughtered by Jews. In 1591, the Christian butcher guild filed another complaint that Jews were continuing to sell meat illegally and thus bringing “the guild to ruin.” As late as 1600, the city council summoned Jewish leaders to remind them of the king’s 1583 stipulation. In 1600 and 1601, at the same time as the host desecration trial, another trial occurred in which a prominent Bochnia Jew, Jacob Ickowicz, accused a Christian named Tchórz of stealing his salt. Other trials, over failed payment of loans, suggest close economic entanglement between Jews and Christians with potential for conflicts. Some scholars have attributed the rising animosity against Jews in Bochnia to their moneylending activities, which sometimes led to Jews taking ownership of important real estate. Perhaps this is what Kmita meant in his reference to Jews’ “desire” to take over Poland. The declining economy and the religious instability probably inspired the assaults on Jews that led to the expulsion of 1606. Yet, although the political climate in Bochnia (a prominent royal town where many nobles resided) was increasingly anti-Jewish, it did forestall spectacles of anti-Jewish violence such as those experienced elsewhere in Poland at the time, and previously


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elsewhere in Europe. The presence of nobles in Bochnia seems to have moderated the city’s response to Mazur’s allegations about the Jews, since Bochnia’s court was relatively restrained. In a relatively rare move for Poland, the court in Bochnia did not push immediately either to execute the accused Christians or to persecute the Jews. Rather, the court obeyed requests of nobles and other royal officials to halt the trial and to follow existing procedures for such a case, by referring it to the king and letting the case run its due course. And though Jews were eventually compelled to leave the city, steps taken against them appear almost as an afterthought to Dudka’s confession in the spring of 1600. Pamphlets propagating the story did not appear until years after the trial, probably only after the Jews had been expelled. In the immediate aftermath, at least according to court records, life seems to have followed its old ways—Jews interacting with Christians, lending and borrowing money, and buying and selling real estate. In that respect, Bochnia differed from other places with similar trials where immediate persecution followed, as in Sochaczew in 1556 or Przemyśl in 1630. In the end, no Jews died in Bochnia, except the one killed in a brawl by miners after the expulsion. As one reads the court records, it almost appears, in contrast to certain other Polish cases before and after, that in Bochnia the end could have been different, and there may have been no case against the Jews at all. But like other anti-Jewish trials in post-Reformation Poland, the trial and expulsion of Jews did not result in the founding of a eucharistic cult. The town later developed its own Marian shrine to strengthen Catholicism in a region affected by the Reformation, but that shrine bore no sign of memory of the trial.

7 The Struggle for Power and Authority

King Sigismund III, the same king who issued a decree expelling Jews from Bochnia in 1605 in the aftermath of a host desecration trial, twenty-five years later defended Jews against similar anti-Jewish charges in Przemyśl. This reversal did not stem from a change of heart; even at the time, he was known to be key to the successful re-Catholicization of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Rather, the king fought back to protect his own power, challenged by “the insolence” of the magistrate. On March 25, 1630, a Monday before Easter, a Christian woman, Caterina Kucharzowa, was accused of sacrilege in Przemyśl, a religiously and ethnically diverse city with a large Jewish community and home to Catholic and Orthodox bishoprics. When Kucharzowa hid a Communion wafer in a kerchief after she had received it a moment earlier in the cathedral church, she was immediately taken into “an ecclesiastical office,” examined, arrested, and transferred to the magistrate. At the city hall interrogation, Kucharzowa confessed she had stolen the host to help with her fertility. She had planned to consume the wafer with beer or vinegar, so that she would become pregnant and regain her husband’s love. The next day, under torture, she changed her story, and began to accuse Jews. Later that night, the Jewish section of

t he struggl e for pow er a nd au t hor it y

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the town was raided and some Jewish men were arrested, among them, several prominent community leaders along with a haberdasher, Moszko Szmuklerz, whom Kucharzowa had singled out as an accomplice. After several days of interrogations, on Good Friday, Kucharzowa was burned at the stake; Szmuklerz followed her at the stake a week later. On her way to the fire, Kucharzowa had pled with the officials to “place on the site where I am dying a statue of God’s Passion and light a candle for my soul in a church.” Despite her pleas, no shrine commemorating this event was ever erected and the trial’s memory gradually faded away, at least among local Christians. Though documented by court and royal officials, their reports preserved in the archives, the trial waited to be rediscovered by historians centuries later. But among Przemyśl Jews themselves, the trial had not passed into oblivion. After Szmuklerz was executed on Friday, April 5, the day after Passover ended, Jews in Przemyśl began to honor “his martyrdom” with a special fast day added to synagogue liturgy for celebration on the last day of the Hebrew month Adar, two weeks before each Passover. Every year until the eve of World War II, a long penitential prayer, a selihah, was said on that day in honor of Szmuklerz’s death. The drama of that Holy Week in Przemyśl in 1630 had begun like many other accounts of stealing the host for use in healing magic, but had escalated—in this case, overnight—into a spectacle of anti-Jewish violence. The details of the trial that followed are fascinating for their revelation of levels of contact between Jews and Christians, of popular healing methods, and of contemporary religious beliefs. Still, the trial’s significance lay elsewhere, in the legal wrangling between the magistrate and the royal officials over the competence of courts and the scope of royal power. The preserved sources suggest that, in turning the trial of healing magic into an anti-Jewish affair, the city officials had in mind the events from thirty years earlier in Bochnia, when a trial of two Christians accused of host desecration had led to the expulsion of Jews only five years afterward. The Przemyśl officials’ swift actions, instead of leading to the expulsion of Jews sooner than in Bochnia, led to a protracted struggle for power between the city authorities and the monarch, a fight that appeared to be about the Jews, but which had serious ramifications for the royal authority in an increasingly fragmented Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

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Infertility, Healing Magic, and the Manipulation of Evidence On March 28, 1630, three days after Caterina Kucharzowa was caught stealing the Communion wafer, Mathias Siecinski, the city prosecutor, filed a formal indictment against her and “all the Jewish elders and commoners of Przemyśl,” demanding serious punishment for this “most horrendous crime.” The indictment claimed that “local Jews along with the rest of the Jewish community” had dared to offend God once more “during these glorious days when his suffering is commemorated all over the world,” motivated by their centuriesold “rancor and venom” against Christians, and by their desire to “insult the Majesty and Creator, Lord God.” Siecinski wrote that the elders of the Jewish community had chosen Moszko Szmuklerz and a man named Łachman, both Jews, as two “instruments” of the sacrilege, and they in turn had found a Christian woman, Caterina Kucharzowa, to obtain the Communion wafer for them, and promised her a reward. Kucharzowa, “an unworthy and evil woman, may she turn into stone like Lot’s wife . . . , took the eucharistic wafer out of her mouth and stole it, committing the shameful sacrilege.” But, because “God’s revelation is more powerful than Satan’s, she could not conceal it” and was caught right there near the altar. She was sent to “the ecclesiastical office,” where the “most holy body of the Son of God and our Savior” was found in her kerchief; Kucharzowa was then taken to the magistrate and confined in the city prison for investigation and punishment for her “enormous and horrendous crimes.” At the trial, the prosecutor asserted that under investigation, “both during torture and after torture,” she had implicated two Jews, Moszko Szmuklerz and Łachman, and “persisted constantly in her confession.” Szmuklerz was deemed “a collaborator and instrument of the Jewish elders and the whole Jewish community,” and accused of persuading Kucharzowa to commit “this crime.” Łachman was nowhere to be found, and the magistrate stated that he had been able to flee because Jewish elders had warned him of impending arrest. The elders and the entire Jewish community also were considered guilty because of direct involvement in the crime and because of their “rancor and venom” against Christians and their God, so Siecinski said later. The synagogue sexton, Joseph, was said to have gone from house to house on the Jewish street, knocking on each door and thus allowing “many” Jews to escape, including Łachman. Zelik, another Jew, was arrested as a collaborator because he had employed Łachman as his farmhand.


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Court officials explained that as Łachman’s master, Zelik must have had influence over him, perhaps even inciting him to commit this crime. According to Siecinski, it was as clear “as the noon light,” that all these Jews had been “shown to be guilty of this grievous sacrilege, a crime that knows no other crime more serious or horrible.” The prosecutor urged the magistrate, the city captain, the council, and the jurors to remember the oath taken in their office “before Lord God almighty” and avenge “his true blood, which he had spilt for the whole world” by punishing the accused “according to the utmost severity of the law” as they would “murderers, perpetrators of sacrilege, and blasphemers.” Siecinski appealed to the “faith . . . piety, and religion” of the jurors and, referring to anti-Jewish works available in print, noted that “it is not new for the Jews to commit such sacrilege and murders of innocent Christian children, to which numerous trials, court decrees, confessions, executions, all brought to light in published volumes, testify.” He proposed that the Jews directly accused by Kucharzowa be punished by fire, and that the rest of the Jews, “the elders and all of the community,” be expelled from the city and their property confiscated. The prosecutor’s indictment is revealing in what it omits. Missing is the discussion of Kucharzowa’s full confession before torture. In her first voluntary testimony after her transfer to the magistrate, she had told quite a different story, one in which Jews were absent. She said that she had sought the host because she was hoping to become pregnant. She had confided in another woman, Zophia Kolibabicha (from the village of Miękisz, not far from Przemyśl), that her husband “had complained” because “she did not have a child by him.” Kucharzowa had asked Kolibabicha for advice, and she said that Kolibabicha had told her “to go to church and take the sacrament, even a small piece like a fingernail, keep it in your mouth and consume it with beer or vinegar, or anything else, and you will have a child.” Therefore, Kucharzowa came to Przemyśl, went to confession at the Jesuit church, and then to the Catholic cathedral for Communion. “When the priest gave it to me, I swallowed half, the other half I kept between my teeth, and put it in the kerchief.” A young woman kneeling behind Kucharzowa saw her and denounced her to the priest. Had she not been denounced, Kucharzowa said that she “would have gone to an inn, bought some beer for a penny, and drunk it [with the host].” She had told no one about it, not even her husband. No one knew and no one “hired me to do it.” She firmly denied that anyone had paid her to obtain the host.

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Kucharzowa was sent back into prison as officials sought to find out more about Kolibabicha and, the next day, she was called back into court to explain a discrepancy that officials had discovered in her testimony. She had indicated that she had seen Kolibabicha in Radymno, a small town near Przemyśl, but the court found that Kolibabicha lived in Miękisz, a village nearby; this was bad news for Kucharzowa because a discrepancy meant that she would likely be sent to torture. That night she was taken to the torture chamber, where she confirmed her story of the day before about her marital troubles, her desire to have a child, and Kolibabicha’s advice. She added a small but significant detail that Kolibabicha had told her to bring the host to her, and that Kolibabicha was to prepare the drink for her. On the rack, Kucharzowa repeated that Kolibabicha had told her to bring the wafer, but said she did not know why. Nor was this the last version of the story. Kucharzowa also talked on the rack about “one fat, potbellied Jew,” whose name she “did not know,” as the instigator of the affair. Later on, she named the Jew, Moszko Szmuklerz, telling the court that for the wafer, he had promised her a sheepskin coat for the winter, a dress, and some money. Once more on the rack, where she was also burned on her sides with lighted candles, Kucharzowa added that Szmuklerz wore sumptuous clothes and that she had visited his house “downstairs.” Tortured further, she added that she “had previously said that she had needed the sacrament to become pregnant” because she “had thought I would not be punished for this but it was Moszko the Jew who persuaded me to do it, and I will die because of him.” She gave an unusually detailed description of Szmuklerz’s body; aside from fairly typical adjectives such as “bearded,” “short,” and “potbellied,” she now added the evocative description “fleshy.” While it is difficult to say, perhaps Kucharzowa’s earlier visit to the “downstairs” of Szmuklerz’s house may have been sexual, if it indeed had happened without her husband’s knowledge, although Szmuklerz later denied even knowing her. The change in Kucharzowa’s testimony might be explained by the state of court records— only summaries of interrogations, with the prosecutors’ questions not preserved. Perhaps leading questions, other insinuations from the officials, or the experience of torture itself prompted the change of the story. Still, Kucharzowa did not entirely disavow her first version; in the end, she conflated the two. After torture, she confirmed the latter part of her testimony, saying that Szmuklerz and Łachman had asked her to get them “God’s gift.” “What gift?” she had asked them, “We only have God’s body.” She had


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promised to bring them the host during Holy Week, and when she went to Miękisz, she saw Kolibabicha there. Apparently, when she complained to Kolibabicha that her husband was not good to her because she had no children by him, Kolibabicha told her to “bring the most holy sacrament when you take communion.” “What will you do with it?” Kucharzowa had asked, “It is a sin.” At least according to this latest version, Kolibabicha replied, “Sh, it is not a sin, bring me a few, if you can.” Kucharzowa told the court: “I said that [Zophia Kolibabicha] had told me to drink [the host] to become pregnant because I had thought I would not be punished, but I was trying to get it for the Jews, and, for Zophia, I was going to get it again the week after Easter.” This morphing testimony was not mentioned in the prosecutors’ indictment, in which the story was much simpler—Kucharzowa had stolen the host during Holy Week to deliver it to Jews, who were about to celebrate their Passover. Magic and healing were curiously missing, though they would not have been less incriminating. Because Kucharzowa “had persisted” in blaming the Jews, after midnight on that same night of March 26, the city officials rounded up Jews, invading the Jewish quarter and arresting the men. One official had told the court: “I arrested all these Jews by the order from the castle court. . . . I went first to find the accused Jew, Łachman, and the Jewish elders. Then I went to Moszko Stryjski, who accepted the warrant, then to Jeleń who was sleeping on a bench. . . . From Jeleń, I went to Isaac, but, since he was not home, I delivered the warrant to his son, who promised to give it to his father. The synagogue beadle was with me to assure that no Jews would leave the city until the trial.” The prosecutor argued that this was not actually what had happened. Actually, Joseph Baruchowicz, the sexton and scribe of the synagogue (synagogus et secretarius seniorum Judaeorum), had gone around the Jewish part of town, knocking on people’s doors, and causing “Łachman, the accomplice, to flee.” But no Jew who was brought to court knew anyone named Łachman. They all said there had been no one of such a name in Przemyśl, since at least seven years earlier, when a Łachman “who knew Latin died during a plague.” Kucharzowa and a few other Christians disagreed, one of whom recalled that Zelik, the Jew behind whose house Szmuklerz lived, once had a “feminine looking” farmhand of that name. Two workers at a local mill who were summoned by the prosecution mentioned one Jew who they assumed to be Łachman fleeing the city and trying to cross the river late on Tuesday night, perhaps even after midnight, presumably as a result of the roundup.

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The following morning, Wednesday, March 27, the eve of Passover, all arrested Jews were brought to court and confronted with Kucharzowa. She continued to insist on Szmuklerz’s and Łachman’s guilt, whereupon the Jews asked for defense; the court initially refused, though eventually it did allow certain noblemen to represent them in court and to file appeals. The noblemen protested the actions of the magistrate, the council, and the local court, declaring these offices incompetent to judge Jews in the light of royal privileges guaranteeing that Jews be tried in royal courts. They demanded adjournment of the proceedings until the matter could reach the king. The court granted an adjournment of only a few hours for the Jews to consult with their defense; it refused to wait any longer. This was the beginning of what turned out to be a lengthy back-and-forth between the representatives of the Jews, the city, and finally, the royal officials— a process that was not resolved for four months. In the meantime, the court sentenced Caterina Kucharzowa to death by burning, a punishment she probably would have received even if she had been simply tried for misuse of the host for healing magic, without accusing the Jews. On Good Friday, before her execution, Kucharzowa appeared in court and, in the presence of Moszko Szmuklerz, once more reaffirmed her previous testimony incriminating him. Szmuklerz objected that he was not even in Przemyśl the day she said he had persuaded her to steal the host. But another Christian who was present in court countered that he had seen him that very day. Szmuklerz turned to Kucharzowa and said, “You are giving your soul to the devil because you accuse me unjustly.” “I am not,” Kucharzowa shot back, “but you will because I am accusing you truthfully.” Led to the stake, and once more asked about Szmuklerz’s and Łachman’s guilt “of this great crime,” Kucharzowa was urged to recant if she had accused them unjustly so she “would not burden her soul with them.” Kucharzowa insisted, “I am ready to swear that this is the Jew and none other.” She added, enigmatically, “I will not lead my soul astray because the priests have done enough to do so.” Bound to the stake “in the presence of many people,” she stated firmly, “I confirm what I have said. I am dying because of none other than these two Jews . . . who convinced me to commit this deed. I am very sorry to leave this world through this cruel death, and I absolve the court for the pain.” And she warned, “I know [the Jews] have the power of money, and they will manage to ransom themselves, but if they do, I beg you to place on the site where I am dying a statue of God’s Passion and light a candle for


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my soul in a church.” The economic position of the Jews in Przemyśl had come into focus for the first time. On the evening of Good Friday after Kucharzowa’s execution, Szmuklerz was taken to the torture chamber. He told his tormentors that whatever “the woman” had said were “pure rumors”; he had not convinced “this woman” to obtain the wafer, certainly not with Łachman, whom he “did not know.” “We have never needed [the host], no one among us does.” On the rack and simultaneously burned thrice with candles, Szmuklerz accused the officials of “committing injustice.” He had believed that they were to pull him on the rack only once. City officials embraced accusations against Szmuklerz, for they fit what the officials believed Jews had done elsewhere; the prosecutor’s argument conflated host desecration and ritual murder accusations “in Bochnia and Poznań, and other towns in the Polish crown where they had stolen and murdered children and obtained the sacrament.” With Easter approaching, the court adjourned the case until the following week; the arrested Jews remained in prison. When the court reconvened, the noblemen defending the Jews once more challenged the legality of the proceedings, but to no avail. On Friday, April 5, one week after Kucharzowa’s execution, Moszko Szmuklerz was sent to torture once again, “from the fourth hour of the night till the ninth.” The prolonged and excessive torture had disgusted even some Christians because it had included “the burning of his shameful parts.” Szmuklerz affirmed his innocence until his death at the stake the following day. With his death on the Jewish Sabbath, for the Jewish community in Przemyśl, Szmuklerz became a martyr and a hero who had remained faithful to God and to his community. A commemorative penitential prayer (a selihah) in acrostic was composed soon after the affair, and recited in synagogue every year thereafter for centuries. The prayer evoked biblical verses and tropes to express the community’s sense of rage, loss, and of abandonment by God. It included references to the story of Abraham’s offering up of Isaac, the akedah, employed centuries earlier by medieval Jewish chroniclers, commemorating crusade massacres to describe Jewish martyrdom as the equivalent of Abraham’s “offering” to God and as a sign of Jews’ unconditional faithfulness and obedience. Like the Jewish narratives of the crusades, the prayer said in Przemyśl was loaded with expressions of faith in God and calls for God’s vengeance against enemies of the Jews who “plot new libels every day.” But the prayer also offered reassurance that God had not abandoned

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Jews in their adversity. Through Szmuklerz’s martyrdom, the Jews’ commitment to the true God was demonstrated, and thus his death was not in vain. The selihah, in unusual detail, told of the events leading up to Szmuklerz’s death, sometimes confirming or further illuminating what was unclear or missing from the surviving court records. It sheds light on the reasons behind Caterina Kucharzowa’s change of testimony. When the “accursed woman” was in prison, the anonymous poet wrote, “the wicked ones” urged her to implicate “a Jew, ‘Moshe,’ whom she did not know.” Torturing her “not very cruelly,” they again pressured her to tell on “Moshe” (Moszko Szmuklerz). When she finally agreed to accuse him, “the wicked ones” gathered together “in multitude” to raid the Jewish part of town; they broke doors and windows, and captured “anyone who came into their hands.” They confined those captured, among them “the righteous, holy, learned martyr R. Moshe bar Israel,” in a special secret prison that no one knew about. According to the anonymous poet, the entire city was locked up for several days, corroborating the court records. No one could go out to seek help for the Jews. On Friday, “the second day of Passover,” they burned “the accursed woman,” “without torturing her for the second time.” Later that same day, “at the time of evening prayer [’arvit],” Szmuklerz was taken to torture, put on the rack, stretched thrice, and burned with sulfur, but even then “his righteousness was revealed to the non-Jews.” They afflicted him with “many kinds” of suffering, but Szmuklerz affirmed his faithfulness to God, as he screamed the Shem’a, “Oh Hear Israel, Lord is Our God, Lord is One, save me from the hands of oppressors.” Much like the Jewish chroniclers of the crusades, the poet emphasized the oneness of God, an implicit polemic against Christians, and a reassurance for Jews about their God. The prayer suggests that some Christians had sent for a doctor to tend to Szmuklerz’s wounds after torture, and they assured his wife and children that he would come home. Some non-Jews “were astonished at the immensity of his suffering and the strength of his heart,” as he remained “in his faith because the spirit of God was near him.” But, on Sabbath night, Christians returned and tortured Szmuklerz excessively “all night.” They believed that “spells were in the hair,” and so they shaved Szmuklerz’s hair and beard. But, the poem continued, not all Christians turned against him; some had even tried to change the heart of the king and the nobles, understanding that “lies of the testimonies” were behind an effort “to expel Jews from the town.” When, on the Sabbath, Saturday, April 6, it was “decided to burn him,”


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Szmuklerz’s wife and children went to the council with tears and cries to see him, but to no avail. Wood was collected and a stake prepared, and “the righteous one went up in flame like a burned offering in the temple, receiving upon himself the decree from heaven with love, grace, and joy.” His martyrdom was witnessed by “all the non-Jews,” who heard him “scream loudly ‘Oh, Hear Israel, Lord is Our God, Lord is One.’ On this day God was one and his name was one.” Szmuklerz’s “heart [was ready] to unite with God.” The prayer wound down with praise of God as “just” and his decrees as “righteous.” It called for vengeance “over our enemies,” expressing hope “to turn our mourning into joy” in a messianic age, when the temple would be rebuilt. Citing the Psalms, the poet concluded, “for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep for the slaughter [Psalm 44:22] . . . Oh, God of vengeance, God of vengeance, shine forth!” [Psalm 94:1]. Moszko Szmuklerz’s death did not end the affair. Several other Jews arrested during the raid were still in prison, hoping that an appeal to higher authorities would win them freedom. And then there was Zophia Kolibabicha, said to have given Caterina Kucharzowa the fateful advice to obtain a consecrated Communion wafer to help her become pregnant. On April 10, nearly two weeks after Kucharzowa had died at the stake, the court summoned Kolibabicha to testify to her role in the “sacrilege.”  The two women apparently had shared a long history; Kucharzowa had been a tenant in Kolibabicha’s house some seven years earlier, but the two had a falling-out and Kolibabicha said they had not spoken since. Although Kolibabicha had denied any conversation about the wafer and claimed that Kucharzowa must have accused her out of anger, when pressed, she admitted that after Kucharzowa had confided that her husband “did not like her,” she had suggested taking the consecrated Communion wafer with vinegar. It was a method that she said she had learned from another woman, now dead, who had promised “it helped.” Sent to the torture chamber, she said only that she gave Kucharzowa the advice she heard from the other woman, that “if a husband does not like his wife, he will only live well with her after she drinks vinegar following communion.” The inquisitors suspected that Kolibabicha was a witch, but she denied it and begged not to be tortured, promising to tell the truth without it. She told the court there were two witches in the area, but she herself did not dabble in magic, except to heal constipation in cattle and other minor diseases. This she had learned from her mother, who was “not a witch” either. On the rack, Kolibabicha said that Kucharzowa had promised linen

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for shirts as payment for help. “I told her to do as the late Szafranka had said: ‘Get the communion wafer and consume it with vinegar.’ If she had brought it to me, we were to dissolve it in vinegar together.” Why had she concealed the information until now? “Because women in town had told me to say nothing . . . ‘because you’ll die.’ ” The following day, the officials decreed that she be punished in the same manner as Kucharzowa and Szmuklerz. Although Jews were entirely missing from Kolibabicha’s testimony, which confirmed Kucharzowa’s original story, the prosecutor again mentioned Jews as culprits in his new indictment. The city officials were determined not to let the matter go.

“Rebellion and Insolence”—Jurisdiction and Power Contested As alluded to in the Hebrew selihah, some local royal officials did not take the prosecution’s case against Moszko Szmuklerz at face value, and suspected an ulterior motive in the magistrate’s and council’s actions against Jews. One nobleman who represented Jews in court noted that the prosecutor’s indictment omitted the fact that the woman who accused Jews had previously dabbled in magic and that her testimony had changed under interrogation. Joannes Broniowski, the deputy palatine and royal official, seconded this statement, questioning the credibility of her accusations. He stressed that if she was “shamelessly and disrespectfully” willing to violate the sacrament, it was not inconceivable that “she would not dare to slander an innocent.”  According to Broniowski, her testimony was doubly irregular because legally, as a woman, Kucharzowa could not testify against a man, even a Jew, and especially taking into consideration her history with magic and her change of testimony, which initially had no mention of Jews. Furthermore, according to law, no innocent person should be condemned to death, and Szmuklerz maintained his innocence until his death. Broniowski revealed other irregularities of the proceedings. On Good Friday, the day Kucharzowa was executed, it was already clear that some clergy had tried to obstruct the legal process by threatening excommunication of anyone who agreed to defend the Jews. As Broniowski explained, this was explicitly against the law in Poland. Broniowski’s protest against the city captain, the captain’s deputy, the councilmen, and all other city officials went deeper; it was that the whole case had been illegitimately handled from the start. He complained of the raid on Jewish homes in the middle of the night, organized by “mutual plotting” of


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officials and commoners based on “slanderous accusations.”  Once the Jews were arrested, the deputy captain had proceeded to act against the Jews with no captain or scribe—usually coappointed by the Jewish community— or any other official present, which was in violation of the law, for the magistrate and the council had no authority over Jews. Authority over Jews rested solely with royal representatives—the palatine or his officers. Broniowski also objected to Szmuklerz’s execution as not only illegal but highly anomalous. Szmuklerz was tortured for the second time after the court had already sentenced him to death, a detail noted also in the selihah. Furthermore, any time the Jews or their representatives had requested a postponement of the trial until the king or the royal tribunal could respond to their appeal, the motions were persistently and flatly rejected, all in “derogation and contempt” of the authority and jurisdiction of the royal palatine. The prosecutor argued that the city did have grounds to arrest the Jews because of Caterina Kucharzowa’s “persistent” testimony “during and after torture.” He demanded also that the Jews produce Łachman or face expulsion and confiscation of property, a ploy reminiscent of Bochnia. Demands by the accused for appeals and postponements were inadmissible because of the “horrendous” nature of the crime, one “that touches God himself, and affects the whole Christian world,” and one that “disparaged the Catholic faith.” Although high-ranking royal officials and the noblemen representing the Jews protested and reprotested, the magistrate and the local castle court denied the right to appeal and postponement of the trial until the king’s decree; the prosecutor insisted that both were justified because the case pertained to “the violation of the divine majesty.” The question of postponement and appeal was not the most important matter behind the royal officials’ protests. Far more serious, and with much more fundamental legal repercussions, was the violation of the royal authority in ignoring the palatine’s jurisdiction over cases involving Jews. According to existing laws that defined Jewish status, Jews in royal cities were excluded from the city’s jurisdiction and, in cases pertaining to Jews, only the palatine or the king had jurisdiction and no “city judge” could adjudicate them. Specifically for Przemyśl, in 1576, King Stefan Batory had issued a decree outlining the palatine’s authority over Jews there and the relationship between the palatine and the Jewish community leaders. The defenders of the Jews ascertained that city officials “had usurped” the authority of the palatine and his deputies.

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The prosecutor objected. Those statutes, he argued, pertained to cases “between” Jews, but “this is not a disagreement between Jews”; the case before them was “truly a case of treason against, and dishonor of, the divine majesty perpetrated by Jews,” and thereby a criminal case, subject to the public law. Moreover, in certain situations, royal or noble jurisdiction had been transferred to the cities; for example, in situations where nobles committed acts of violence in cities, they could be imprisoned and tried by the magistrate. More important for this case, city officials stressed, the 1565 constitution of Piotrków, when it prohibited Christians from serving Jews, had transferred some authority over Jews into the hands of none other than city captains and their deputies and ordered “the city captains and the magistrate to assure the execution of the law.” If, according to this constitution, city officials, “not the palatine,” had jurisdiction over Jews in matters of Christian servants, “should they not have jurisdiction in case of the present horrendous and abominable crime committed not only against religion but God himself?” Furthermore, the prosecutor asked, if the magistrate had the right to try civil cases concerning Jews, why should it not have jurisdiction over criminal matters, especially since, according to existing law, criminal cases were subject to the jurisdiction of the local magistrate? Finally, since royal statues stated that city officials had the responsibility to prosecute thefts, and since this was “a theft of the sacrosanct eucharist,” they were now within the purview of their jurisdiction to prosecute Jews. To buttress his argument that Jews should not be treated more leniently than Christian criminals, prosecutor Siecinski turned to Christian theology. He asked a rhetorical question, alluding to an old Christian theological trope of “the son of a slave woman” (symbolizing Jews) and the “son of a free woman” (symbolizing Christians): If the city had authority over Christian criminal cases and could punish Christian criminals, why should the “son of a slave woman” have more “liberties and preeminence than a son of a free woman”? Royal officials, including the deputy palatine and the palatine himself, Stanisław Lubomirski of Wiśnicz—the very town in which the majority of Bochnia Jews had settled after their expulsion of 1606—understood that this struggle with the magistrate and the council was not only about defending Jews. The magistrate’s argument, if successful, would change the entire legal framework in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, obliterating “the statutes of the Kingdom” and stripping away royal authority over cities, especially that of the palatine, and thus further weakening the king’s power in Poland. The magistrate’s posturing as a protector of the honor of God and the


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Catholic Church fundamentally undermined the authority of the king, who saw himself as the protector of God and the Church. It is thus not surprising that royal officials, and the king himself, sought to refute each and every one of the magistrate’s objections. They argued that the magistrates and officials in all cities must always follow the laws of the kingdom, and they delineated jurisdiction to remove all confusion. But boundaries of jurisdiction were not always clear since Polish law was not codified and remained fragmented, an argument that served the palatine’s case. City officials, now accused of insubordination, tried to strengthen their case by maintaining that their original decree demanding that Jews produce Łachman or face expulsion and confiscation of property abided by the royal decree regarding Jews from Bochnia. They called for more witnesses to prove the Jews’ guilt and to defend their own legal actions; each witness was selected to address a specific point of royal charges against the city officials. The first witness, Joannes Dziurka from the suburb of Przemyśl, was summoned to support the city’s claim that it was not the first time Jews, in general, and of Przemyśl, in particular, had conspired to obtain the consecrated Communion wafer. Dziurka said that around Easter and Passover four years earlier, “a Jew, Moszko Czarny, tried to persuade me to obtain the Most Holy Sacrament for him.” He told the court he wanted to testify because his “confessor told me to come to the magistrate and did not want to absolve me unless I came to the magistrate [to testify].”  According to Dziurka, Moszko Czarny had hired him to travel to Sandomierz, an important city on the Vistula River, about 145 km from Przemyśl. They left Przemyśl on Maundy Thursday (April 9, 1626) and arrived at the town of Przeworsk the following day, Good Friday, which also happened to be the eve of Passover. Dziurka said that as they “celebrated [the holiday] at the house of a Jew, the window maker,” Czarny asked him to get, in exchange for a horse and clothing, “what you Christians receive in church . . . and call the most holy sacrament.” When Dziurka voiced resistance, Czarny became troubled because, according to Dziurka, Czarny had promised the Jewish elders in Przemyśl to secure the host. The second witness, Joannes Kociszewski of Przemyśl, implied that Szmuklerz’s persistent claim of innocence was the result of a spell or at least a Jewish conspiracy. He told the court that Moszko Szmuklerz’s wife had hired him to guard, serve, and feed her husband in prison, which he did by “permission from the city council.”  On Maundy Thursday, that year also the first day of Passover, “they brought him Jewish food, and wine and mead. The servants

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took the food, but not the wine and mead. So he drank the wine, which was cloudy, and gave me the mead. And when he drank the wine, he shivered and said ‘I needed just that, if I only had the green books, then no one would harm me, not the servants, not the executioner.’ ” Kociszewski said that Szmuklerz had asked him how they would torture him, and he demonstrated. Whereupon Szmuklerz said, “I can survive that.” When Szmuklerz returned from the first round of torture on Good Friday, he asked Kociszewski how Christians prayed. “In different ways,” Kociszewski had said, “some kneel, some prostrate like a cross.” Szmuklerz asked him to help him prostrate and spent a few hours on the floor “murmuring.” When Kociszewski asked if Szmuklerz had admitted to anything during torture, “he said, ‘no, I had not confessed to anything, I resisted and when they tried tricks to break me, I would not confess . . . because I am a community leader [namiestnik] . . . and there is a great anathema on anyone who would confess. I will not confess, even if they were to tear me into pieces.’ ” The third witness implied that after Kucharzowa’s arrest, Jews had been spying on the magistrate’s actions, perhaps plotting escape for Łachman and other Jews. Still other witnesses told of a Jew escaping across the San River in the middle of night on Tuesday. All these testimonies were to cover the city officials against allegations that they had misused the law. Although protests from the royal officials did not save Moszko Szmuklerz’s life—the magistrate and the court ignored them and rushed to execute him— they did have consequences. After Kucharzowa had implicated Jews, some city officials must have notified King Sigismund III about the affair in hope of finding an empathetic ear. The city officials knew that this was the same king who, nearly three decades earlier, had signed the expulsion decree for the Jews of Bochnia. At first, the king issued a letter to the Jews of Przemyśl, ordering them “sternly to find the guilty man who had hired and persuaded the woman, and whom, as it was communicated to us, you had helped to escape.” The Jews had eight weeks to fulfill this order under the penalty of “confiscation of property.”  While the letter of April 6 fell a bit short of what the magistrate had hoped for—“expulsion and confiscation of property”— the officials did appear to have the king’s backing. But not for long; six days later, the king issued another letter, this one addressed to the magistrate, the jurors, and the city council, reminding them that “the Jews accused by a certain woman of a crime, arrested promptly and taken into the city prison . . . are subject to the jurisdiction of our honorable palatine . . . and are to be


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judged by him.” The king demanded: “Upon receipt of this order, you should immediately release them from prison, and transfer them to the palatine’s court. You must not dare to execute them.” When city officials failed to follow the monarch’s orders, the king sent another stern letter on April 26, protesting the city officials’ illegal actions: their raid on the Jewish district; the illegal arrest Moszko of Szmuklerz and the two Jewish community officials; the summary execution of Caterina Kucharzowa; and the officials’ persistent refusal to grant Jews the right to appeal to the palatine or to the king himself. That very same day in Przemyśl, without knowing about the king’s latest letter (it reached Przemyśl only two weeks later), the deputy palatine, Joannes Broniowski, protested that the Jews had not yet been released into his hands. The magistrate defiantly maintained that they had applied the law, and thus the Jews could not be released from prison. On May 9, the king dispatched another letter, appointing a royal commission to investigate the affair, and once more admonished the officials for their reckless procedures: “Just as we did not approve of the quick trial of the woman accused of stealing the Most Holy Sacrament, neither do we approve of this latest deed on your part. We were newly informed that you had issued a death sentence on another woman [Kolibabicha], who had been accused by the first woman, and on a Jew, also accused of this crime. We cannot commend you for this.” The women should have been kept in prison longer “because time could have revealed new things, and maybe they would have confessed to everything. If one of them had confessed to something because of torture, or implicated others for other reasons, she may have revoked it [with time] and given a truthful testimony.” The king was struggling to walk a thin line between ignoring the “horrendous crime” and punishing innocent people: “Not wishing that such great excess be silenced and such injury of God be left unpunished, to demonstrate whether or not the Jews were guilty, and also to gather better information . . . we send the noble Jacob Maximilian Fredro,” chosen because of “his courage” and “well-known piety.” He warned city officials to allow Fredro to conduct a thorough investigation: “We want you to receive the aforementioned envoy with respect, and appear before his commission with everyone requested. We desire that you deliver to him the confessions procured from the women, and not impede, or discourage, anyone, of any condition—be they burghers, or men from the suburbs, who might be summoned—from coming.” The king reiterated that the Jews be released from the city prison and transferred into the hands of the palatine,

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“to whose jurisdiction they belong.” Only after such thorough investigation must the guilty be punished. To emphasize the gravity of the decree, unlike other letters sent in the name of the king, which were often signed by a chancellor, this one bore the king’s personal signature and seal. The magistrate protested the validity of the commission and of the entire inquiry, and questioned the legitimacy of witnesses who had testified on behalf of Jews who, they claimed, had bribed these “vagabonds, and schismatics” to testify on their behalf. Georgius Ostrowsky claimed that Jews, “especially Kreska with her husband, whose name I do not remember, with whom I have left a pledge of silver worth ninety-four złotys . . . tried to bribe me to testify on their behalf before the commissioner of His Majesty the King.” But as “a good Catholic, seeing God’s injury,” he did not allow himself to be persuaded. The city’s defiance displeased the king; all the city officials had demonstrated “the sedition” by showing contempt for Jacob Fredro, his envoy and investigator. The king stated that this amounted to derision of his own authority, and such “insolence” and “impudence” would not be tolerated without punishment. On May 31, the king charged two city councilmen with “rebellion and insolence” and summoned them to come to Warsaw within four weeks. The two were to be removed from office and expelled from the city as “an example” to future mutineers. On June 18, having received Fredro’s report, the king issued a verdict pronouncing the Jews’ innocence, and calling on the city council and the magistrate to respect the palatine’s jurisdiction. With the verdict clearly unwelcome by the city, the king issued yet another decree on July 15, condemning all the councilmen, the magistrate, and the jurors for conspiring to jeopardize the findings of the royal commission established to investigate the truth behind “this serious injury against Divine Majesty.” In disrespecting his official “with insolent words,” they dishonored his own person, and thus were guilty of contempt of his authority, for which they were to be punished. The way King Sigismund III treated this host desecration trial in Przemyśl, so different from the one in Bochnia more than two decades earlier, might be explained simply as a result of the king’s aging and maturity. But this king— seen by historians and contemporaries as the monarch responsible for the success of the Counter-Reformation—would not have ignored the “gravity of this horrendous crime against Divine Majesty.” Aging and maturity were likely not behind the transformation, but instead concern with royal power. In Bochnia, the royal authority had not been ignored; though the city offi-


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cials had wanted to promptly execute the two Christian men accused there of stealing the wafer, they agreed to wait for the royal decree before proceeding, and pushed for expulsion of the Jews through appropriate channels of power. It is true that it took years to accomplish their goal, but this approach was effective. Officials in Przemyśl, in contrast, did not want to wait years to achieve the goal of expelling the Jews, which was no secret to either Christians or Jews. The Hebrew selihah explicitly mentioned some “who wanted to expel Jews.” The Przemyśl officials seemed to have learned from Bochnia that they should not wait, and seized the opportunity to remove Jews from the city as soon as Caterina Kucharzowa’s case entered the court. In doing so, they misjudged and overreached, threatening royal authority and power. In their zeal to expel the Jews, they ignored the existing legal frameworks and power structures, and their plan consequently collapsed. Although city officials executed Moszko Szmuklerz and the two Christian women, they failed to “punish” all other Jews, whom they tried to portray as accomplices in the crime. Refusing to wait for the king’s verdict and to transfer the case to the palatine’s proper jurisdiction, they committed an act of rebellion against the king. The king and his officials understood that the stakes were high and that the case had serious implications for their authority and power. If Przemyśl had its way, it would have set precedence for other cities to free themselves from royal influence and to ignore royal jurisdiction. It is likely no coincidence that three years after the affair, when a new king, Władysław IV, was elected to the throne, a constitution was passed clearly defining the legal authority of the palatine and the deputy palatine, their relationship with the magistrates, and their authority over Jews in civil and criminal cases. The constitution warned the deputy palatines and palatines not to cede their jurisdiction over Jews to any other court and to ensure that cases involving Jews be adjudicated in no other court but that of the palatine. The constitution further reiterated the palatine’s authority over criminal cases involving city magistrates and Jews. So, too, in Jewish privileges that were confirmed by the newly elected king, delineation of jurisdiction received particular attention. The privilege gave Jews protection from prosecution by the magistrates, while affirming royal authority. “Experience has shown,” the privilege said, “that in contravention of existing law and privileges granted to Jews city magistrates usurp for themselves the authority to try Jews before the magistrate courts, thus violating the palatine authority.” The magistrate was forbidden to try Jews in criminal cases, especially when a

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Christian accused Jews under torture. In such instances, the accused Jews should be immediately transferred to the hands of the palatine or deputy palatine, and in all instances, they should be free to appeal to the king and his judgment. Ten years after the Przemyśl trial, the case was finally closed by King Władysław IV; he reviewed and annulled the sentence by the magistrate that had threatened Jews with expulsion and confiscation of property should they fail to deliver Łachman. Although the prosecution in Przemyśl repeatedly evoked religious rhetoric and presented the magistrate as a defender of “the Christian world” and the Catholic Church, there is little doubt that in contrast to the first host desecration trial in Poland in 1556, religion was not the prime impetus in Przemyśl. Even in the events in Bochnia, religion had played a role, though economic motivations were largely behind the push for Jewish expulsion from the town. But in Przemyśl, in 1630, it was clear that the magistrate desired to expel the Jews in the early days of the trial, and that the reasons behind the trial were predominantly economic and political, culminating from decades of mounting tensions.

Jewish-Christian Coexistence and Conflict in Przemyśl Throughout the early modern period, Jews and Christians in Przemyśl had a complex history; threads of cooperation and coexistence were woven in with animosity, competition, and occasional outbreaks of violence. But Przemyśl itself was a diverse place, and such conflicts were not limited to Jews. Conflicts and tensions also were palpable among Christians, especially between Catholics and the Orthodox Ruthenians. Aware of their religious differences, inhabitants of Przemyśl mingled and interacted with each other. Sometimes conflicts over land and real estate, the right to trade, violations of guild monopolies, or jurisdiction necessitated royal intervention. Minor disagreements, squabbles, and fistfights, also part of life in Przemyśl, could be attributed more to alcohol or to living in close quarters than to religious differences. For example, one Christian woman, Anna Muzowiczowa, came looking for her husband who was drinking in the house of a Jewish woman, identified as Izrael’s wife. Anna tried to make her husband stop drinking and go to work, but he refused and hurled insults at her. Furious, she grabbed a pot and threw it at him. But the pot bounced and hit another man, who in turn grabbed the woman and beat her up with “fists and legs.” The year of the trial, in an-


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other family dispute over property, a Jew was quietly present as a scribe when the family congregated to settle property issues, but “having sat down, they began to quarrel.” To help the matter move on, one member said that they “should first count the oxen according to their worth”; agreeing, they “began to count the oxen, while the Jew was writing all down.” Even during the host desecration trial itself, soon after Easter, regular business dealings in town between Jews and Christians seem to have continued. It was not such private relations, squabbles, and fights that created a momentum for the concerted effort in Przemyśl by the magistrate and the council to seek ways to expel the Jews, but rather the decades of mounting tensions resulting from economic competition and shared civic responsibilities. Although Jews already had settled in Przemyśl in the Middle Ages, it was not until 1559 that the king granted them an official privilege regulating their residence rights and economic activities. He said he recognized that Jews had lived in Przemyśl from “ancient times,” but as yet had not been granted a “privilege” that would allow them to live in “this city peacefully.” The royal privilege permitted them to own, buy, and sell real estate, with all transactions registered according to the civil law in Przemyśl; they could engage freely in trade as any inhabitant in the city, and as owners of property within the city, they were obliged to pay the city a tax of four złotys per house. The Jews’ right to buy houses from Christians and to own them in a hereditary manner was a prized issue. Each subsequent confirmation of the privilege included that clause, and copies of the privileges deposited with the Jewish community frequently singled out the Jews’ right to real estate ownership in the summary sentence written in Hebrew on the outside. On a copy from 1562, for example, the Jewish scribe wrote that the document was “a privilege concerning all kinds of business matters as well as buying houses.” In 1576, when King Stefan Batory reconfirmed the previously granted privileges, the copy deposited with Jews contained a Hebrew sentence: “And it is permitted to buy houses from the uncircumcised [Christians].” In 1560, a year after the initial royal privilege to Jews of Przemyśl, burghers attacked the Jewish synagogue, “axing its three doors” and ransacking several houses nearby. Scholars have maintained that the attack was a reaction to the privilege, but it is not implausible to argue that the reason the Jews reached out to the king to obtain a document guaranteeing them protection, hereditary ownership of real estate, and trade was precisely because tensions in the city had been rising. The 1560 attack did not discourage Jews from

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taking advantage of the official recognition of their right to settle and work in Przemyśl. In 1570, after a complicated trial over the rightful ownership of a plot of land on which Jews wanted to erect a synagogue, the Catholic cathedral chapter granted the Jews permission for a new synagogue in exchange for a small symbolic annual fee of forty-eight groszy. The following decades saw a marked increase in real estate transactions between Jews and Christians, and an increase of Jewish ownership of homes. In the 1540s, there were about 18 Jewish families in Przemyśl, owning about 7 homes; by 1629, the year before the trial, Jews lived in 64 houses; and by 1661, that number increased to 102. The city officials in Przemyśl were not entirely displeased by the expansion of Jewish ownership of real estate; in fact, in 1588, the mayor and the councilmen specifically granted Jews an empty area to populate, “foreseeing in it a benefit for the republic.” There was a reason for the city to support Jewish settlement—unlike Catholic ecclesiastical institutions and the nobles, who were exempt from city taxes, Jews were required to pay taxes and contribute to the city by helping to maintain streets, city walls, and city guards. However, Jewish presence and Jewish economic activity created economic competition between Jews and Christians and raised tensions between the two communities. Christians’ economic activity revolved around guilds. Given their devotion to patron saints and participation in Christian (in most parts of Poland, Catholic) rituals, guilds were more than trade organizations, often doubling as religious confraternities. Because of the guilds’ religious character, Jews would not have been eager to join them, even if they had been admitted. The guild system thus created conditions in which Jews— along with Orthodox Christians, who also were often excluded from Catholic guilds—necessarily worked outside it, violating the guilds’ monopolies. These and other economic conflicts within the city were often mediated by the king, who forced agreements that increasingly regulated Jewish-Christian economic interaction, but rarely did much to ease the rising tensions. Within less than a decade after the first royal privilege to Jews in Przemyśl, the city burghers appealed to King Sigismund August against what they saw as unfair competition from Jewish merchants who were said to come out to the suburbs of Przemyśl to buy the merchandise before it could reach the city. The king ordered the city captain, then Alex Krasicki, to ensure that the situation, which was “to the detriment of the city,” be resolved. The captain and


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burghers, perhaps emboldened by the decree, acted excessively; three years later, the king issued another decree, this time on behalf of the Jews, reprimanding the city for disturbing the Jews and violating “their liberties and privileges.” The burghers “had invaded [the Jews’] homes and cemetery,” and Jews had been “taunted on the streets and the market place.” The king ordered “the mayor, the chief magistrate, councilmen, and jurors” to ensure that Jews’ rights not be violated and that they be allowed to “sell, buy, open stalls at the market as it has been according to the old custom.” The king threatened punishment should city officials fail to protect Jews. Uneasy relationships between Jewish and Christian merchants persisted, and city officials continued to act in detriment of Jewish trade. Jews again appealed to King Sigismund III; in 1593, he issued another admonition to the burghers and city officials against prohibiting Jews from engaging in trade in accordance with their privileges. Violation of Jewish trade privileges and occasional disturbances and attacks did not cease, however, and in 1606, the same year in which Jews were expelled from Bochnia, the king had intervened on behalf of Jews in Przemyśl. Two years later, the burghers protested against the expansion of Jewish trade in town, alleging that the Jews tended to buy out products “within the city and in the suburbs,” such as cloth, medicine, grains, fish, and metals, and, as a result, created a monopoly that threatened the livelihood of Christians. Despite such protests, Jewish prominence in town, or fear thereof, appears to have been rising; there was talk of granting Jews the same rights as Catholic burghers. In 1608, the leaders of Przemyśl guilds protested against this plan, and ten years later, the Jews yet again marshaled the support of the king against another violation of their privileges. Such a back-and-forth over trade, rights, and guild monopolies continued over the next few decades, past the events in 1630. In 1645, a commission established by King Władysław IV forced the two sides into an agreement. According to the agreement, delivered with unusual pomp, Jews were assured a relative freedom of trade but for a fee of three hundred złotys and “two stones” (about twenty-five kilograms) of gunpowder for defense, delivered to the city on Easter every year, a compromise disliked by both sides. Christian apothecaries agreed to allow Jewish apothecaries to sell medicine and spices, both wholesale and retail, under the condition that they would not sell candles and torches, or medicine to Christians. Jews were permitted to sell cloth, wholesale and retail, under the condition that they would not engage in

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unfair competition during fairs. Each city guild set its own conditions for allowing Jews to practice their trade. The tailor guild, for example, allowed Jews to work “for their own needs”; the fur makers allowed Jews to buy and sell fur and skins, with the exception of fox and sheepskins, under the penalty of confiscation of the skins; and surgeons stipulated that “Jewish surgeons should be prohibited from letting blood and cupping Christians.” Both sides agreed that they would not disturb each other in trade and would not refuse each other merchandise. The agreement, however, was not the end of the story; seven years later, city burghers filed a complaint against Jews, accusing them of violation of the agreement, and in 1660, Jews filed a complaint against the city for imposing unfair restrictions on their right to trade. Beyond issues of trade and economic competition that contributed to the tensions, there were other potential fire spots when it came to civic obligations, such as providing or financing city night guards, repairing city streets and walls, keeping the streets in good order, and cleanliness. Sometimes such obligations led to closer cooperation between the Jews and the municipal authorities; sometimes they contributed to further frictions. For example, Jewish community leaders agreed to pay twenty złotys each year toward financing the ser vice of city night guards, to share costs (six hundred złotys in three payments) in fortifying the city, which was vulnerable to raids; to control sewage; and to pave the streets. In exchange, they would be guaranteed an exemption from future levies earmarked for the fortification, and would receive permission to build a hospital and two houses, one for the cantor and one for the synagogue beadle. Repeated complaints filed by the city suggest that the Jews may not have fully satisfied their obligations; they were admonished by King Sigismund III for not fulfilling their part of the contract. Just three years before the 1630 trial, the king again summoned Jewish leaders for not maintaining the walls in good shape, “to the detriment of the city,” keeping them dirty and vulnerable to destruction. The culprit structures seem to have been outhouses, the waste from which threatened to damage the walls.

The 1630 trial in Przemyśl— and its morphing from a trial of magic and witchcraft to an anti-Jewish affair—underlines the importance of local religious, economic, and political conditions in fostering libelous accusations against Jews, and highlights the role of local officials and their power to de-


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fine cases and try them as they saw fit. Official documents, by their nature, provide mostly materials relating to conflict, picturing a trail of uneasy coexistence between Jews and Christians before and after the trial in 1630. Friendly relations between Jews and Christians found their way to court records only as a background to stories of conflict (they may have found their way to anti-Jewish literature and Church legislation that prohibited such relations). Although friendly individual relations between Jews and Christians existed, a dark cloud of animosity— grounded in economic competition and expectations of civic duties—hung over the two communities on the eve of the trial. And this may well be one of the reasons why, when an opportunity arose, the Przemyśl city council and its officials were all the more eager to apply lessons from Bochnia and use the trial of Caterina Kucharzowa as a means of expelling the Jews from their own town. They failed in this; the Jews were not expelled from Przemyśl and continued to prosper in the city for centuries to come. The failure of city authorities of Przemyśl to fulfill their plan of expulsion was not because the accusations against Jews seemed outlandish—after all, the same king who thwarted their plans had expelled Jews from Bochnia based on similar accusations— but because the officials overstepped legal boundaries of authority. In rushing the prosecution and execution, the officials in Przemyśl were seen as acting “in contempt” of the royal power, and by pushing further to defend themselves against charges of mutiny, they worsened their situation, leading the king to punish them as an example. As a longterm legacy, beyond the penitential prayer recited annually in the local synagogue, the Sejm passed a constitution in 1633, reaffirming legal parameters of magistrate and palatine jurisdiction, both in general and more specifically in criminal cases involving Jews. These measures certainly were not undertaken out of sympathy for Jews and they did not save Moszko Szmuklerz’s life. They were intended to protect and reaffirm the king’s authority and power.

8 Justice and the Politics of Crime

Charges of sacrilege filed against Christians in post-Reformation Poland allowed secular courts to affirm the sacredness of Catholic churches and relegated other religious groups to a realm excluded from “the sacred.” In doing so, the courts, perhaps unwittingly, strengthened the power of the Catholic Church, accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they were expected to do when first granted the right to take on religious cases in the wake of the Reformation. Politically, the secular courts’ power and the charges of sacrilege were most acutely manifest in high-profile trials that involved Jews in Sochaczew in 1556, at the height of the Catholic and Protestant struggle for power; in Bochnia, in the aftermath of revelations of a stolen host in the first years of the seventeenth century; and in Przemyśl in 1630, when a charge of healing magic against a Christian woman quickly became an anti-Jewish accusation with serious ramifications for royal authority. In anti-Jewish affairs, politics often extended beyond the affirmation of the sacredness of the Catholic spaces and beyond the defense of Catholic doctrines to rending questions of political and economic power. In almost all cases of sacrilege involving Christians alone, the courts’ actions were swift and execution at the stake prompt, but the pace was slower

just ice a nd t he polit ics of cr ime

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in cases involving Jews and other authorities intervened, often including the king himself. Jews had access to power— something poor Christian thieves or women desiring to treat infertility with the eucharistic wafer did not. Jews also could count on support from their own community, which collected money for defense against charges of libels. Royal privileges that guaranteed Jews the direct involvement of royal authorities in the event of accusations against them, and the Jews’ connections to prominent nobles transformed such cases into high-profile events. This network of support did not always save lives, but it made some court officials aware of the political implications of charges against Jews beyond prosecution of “the crime of sacrilege itself.” It took political will to turn such charges into anti-Jewish spectacles; as a result, not all church robberies in which Jews appeared as fences or thieves became full-blown persecutions of Jews, nor did all accusations of Jews stealing the host or killing a Christian child. Because of the centuries-old imagery of Jews in Christian theology as “Christ killers” and “enemies of Christianity,” it was not difficult to exploit an accusation for political gain. But with no pressing political need, accusations against Jews often fell flat, even despite the plethora of anti-Jewish works, such as those evoked by the magistrate in Przemyśl in 1630. AntiJewish writers, like Jan Achacy Kmita, and instigators of trials against Jews, like Nuncio Luigi Lippomano, who played an active role in the trial in Sochaczew, attributed acquittal of Jews to Jewish bribery. But the local context and the power or complicity of local courts frequently led to— or prevented— outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence.

Rejecting the Charges—Libels in Court, a Different Outcome On May 29, 1630, on the eve of Corpus Christi and merely a few weeks after the trial in Przemyśl, by order of the Crown Tribunal in Lublin, the trial began of a Christian man named Matthias, who was accused “of sacrilege.” On the Sunday before, Matthias evidently had received communion in the local Jesuit church, but instead of swallowing the host, he had retained it in his mouth and placed it in a kerchief. When he was asked “why he had committed this sacrilege,” Matthias replied, “because Jews in Lublin had convinced me to.” These Jews, he said, had promised him money and food and drink if he “delivered [to them] the Divine Sacrament from three churches.” Matthias never named these Jews and described only vaguely where they lived, pointing

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toward the Jewish quarter just outside the city walls. Soon after stealing the host, he had “encountered another Jew,” and asked “whether he wanted to buy some church stuff.” Matthias recounted in court that the Jew told him to wait, and then “came back with a man, who I don’t know if he was a Jew or a Christian.” When the two men inquired what he had to sell, Matthias responded: “The Divine Sacrament,” whereupon the second man punched him in the face and dragged him to the nearby castle, where a priest was summoned to retrieve the stolen host. The court repeatedly asked Matthias who had incited him to commit the crime. Time and again, Matthias said, “Nobody but the Jews.”  The story changed slightly when Matthias was asked how much the Jews had promised him for the hosts. Ten złotys, he said, “and they even gave me a piece of paper to wrap the Divine Sacrament in.” The court wanted to know, “Had the Jews incited him before he went to confession?” “Before confession,” Matthias confirmed, “but I did not reveal it to the priest.” The added detail about the paper and confession appears to be a minor but not insignificant point, resembling the host desecration trial in Bochnia in 1600 that was popularized in pamphlets and songs. Matthias may have known or heard about that trial. This admission also made Matthias’s confession “sacrilegious.”  Under torture, Matthias repeated, “Three Jews incited me to this evil deed . . . if I am to die, let the Jews, who incited me, die as well.” The next day, when Matthias was asked again “who had incited him to this deed,” his confession changed once more. This time, Matthias said: “It was my own idea to do it. I thought to sell the Divine Sacrament to Jews for sustenance.” The court asked whether the Jews had incited him to do this. Matthias again denied it. So, “why,” the court wanted to know, “did he say yesterday that Jews had allegedly incited him to do this deed”? Matthias responded, “because I understood I would get out of prison.” The court then probed further: How much had he hoped to receive for the host from the Jews? Had he heard about a woman who was said to have stolen “the Most Holy Sacrament?” Did he know where she was from, and whether she was still alive? Matthias answered, perhaps referring to Caterina Kucharzowa, who had been executed in Przemyśl just a few weeks earlier, that he had heard about a woman “who had hidden the Most Holy Sacrament in her mouth,” but she had been captured. Hearsay evidently spread such accusations. The court returned again to the question of Jews, but Matthias continued his denial. Since he had contradicted his earlier confession, he was sent once


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more to the torture chamber where he insisted on the Jews’ innocence and said again that he had accused them hoping to get out of prison himself. Matthias was sentenced to death; his hands, “with which he dared to touch the Most Holy Sacrament,” were to be amputated before his execution at the stake. Though, in its sentencing decree, the court included the charge that Matthias had intended to sell the host to Jews, there is no evidence that Jews themselves were prosecuted in this case. In another case, tried in 1639 by the court in Wiśnicz—the town where Jews from Bochnia settled after their expulsion in 1606— a peasant, Mathias Gawęndzyk, was denounced by two vicars of a church in the nearby village of Pogwizdów; he was brought to court because of the “stolen Most Divine Sacrament of Eucharist.” This was a case of church robbery and fencing, but the court focused on the host in what became a protracted case involving a Jewish woman, Freyda Samsonka, who had accepted Gawęndzyk’s loot and who, he said, had asked to commit this “sacrilege.” For more than two years, Gawęndzyk had frequented Samsonka’s house to drink. She began to encourage him to bring stolen goods, and according to Gawęndzyk, one time she became specific: “Dear Mathias, if you get me the host without robbery . . . I will pay you well.” Gawęndzyk is said to have responded: “Perhaps I can get you something else?” He said that Samsonka then suggested a chalice, and he consented to this compromise. On the festival of St. Margaret (July 20), Gawęndzyk went to his village, sneaked into the church through the bell tower, and stole “the ciborium containing the Most Holy Sacrament.” After leaving the church, he hid the loot in a barn. But some weeks later, he apparently removed the hosts, wrapped them in the silk cloth and left them in the barn, taking the empty ciborium to the Jewess, Samsonka. She was disappointed with its weight and value and gave Gawęndzyk “three złotys for oats,” promising to weigh it later in order to estimate its value better. But each time Gawęndzyk returned, she had no answer for him. He considered returning the three złotys to the Jewess, retrieving the ciborium, putting the hosts back in, and taking everything back to the church. He thought the plan would work since no one except for Samsonka knew about the theft. Gawęndzyk returned to Samsonka once more, but she was not home; Samson, her husband, was there but he said he knew nothing about the ciborium. Gawęndzyk’s testimony ended there. When Samsonka was brought to court to testify, her story differed. She denied the accusation, and said that Gawęndzyk had come to her three weeks

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earlier with the ciborium, which he said he had found in water when traveling from Cracow to Wiśnicz. Samsonka seemed incredulous. “Mathias, don’t lie to me, it resembles a church chalice,” she said. After Gawęndzyk knelt in front of her and swore the ciborium was not from a church, she accepted the object, wrapped it in a woolen cloth, and placed it in a secured chest. She did not want to hand him money until her husband returned, but when Gawęndzyk asked for at least a little money “for oats,” she did give him three złotys. The following Saturday, Samsonka’s husband found the chalice in a chest and “yelled, and beat [her], and told [her] to keep quiet,” at least until he notified the “castle,” as he did the following day. After his arrest, Gawęndzyk told two priests summoned by the court where the hosts were hidden. The priests retrieved the wafers and returned them to their church, with great pomp “in the presence of many.” When Gawęndzyk confronted Samsonka in court, he continued to insist that she had incited him to steal the ciborium with hosts. He told the officials that he had had second thoughts after stealing it; hence, he had decided to hide the hosts and give the Jewess only the empty chalice. Under torture, Gawęndzyk repeated his accusation, saying, “Let her die like me, because she is the reason for [my suffering]. I am dying because of her. I would not have thought of it, if not for her.” Reminding him that his end was near, the court exhorted him not to implicate innocent people, but Gawęndzyk insisted on Samsonka’s guilt, and she soon became an accused. The court’s final verdict against Mathias Gawęndzik concentrated on the stolen hosts, said nothing about his selling them to the Jewess, and considered the theft of the chalice secondary. “In accordance to the laws,” Gawęndzyk was sentenced to death by live burning in a public place “on occasion of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist” stolen “with a silver ciborium” from a church and hidden “in a dark and lowly place, namely a barn.” Much like Caterina Kucharzowa in Przemyśl in 1630, when Gawęndzyk was led to the stake, he spoke in “a loud voice, well understood by the troops standing nearby, ‘Help me God, may my relatives not suffer on account of this, because they did not know about it, only I and the Jewess, who had persuaded me.’ ” Tied to the stake, he repeated, “I am leaving this world, and I accuse this Jewess, Samsonka, who advised me and persuaded me [to do it].” Samsonka is not mentioned in the court’s verdict, but Gawęndzyk’s persistent incrimination led to her trial some weeks later “on account of her complicity.” Her trial began on October 18, 1639; the plaintiffs—the same


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vicars of the Pogwizdów church who had accused Mathias Gawęndzyk of sacrilege—repeated the version of events Gawęndzyk had provided and, as evidence of her guilt, cited several cases of Jewish host desecrations said to have happened in Poland. Most of them were known from published books and pamphlets: the legend of three miraculous hosts in Poznań, the trial in Sochaczew in 1556, and trials in “a few other places,” including “one recently” in “nearby Bochnia.”  The priests claimed that Gawęndzyk had to swear to the Jewess that the ciborium, or chalice, had contained the hosts. The oath mentioned was perhaps the same noted in Samsonka’s testimony, except she claimed that she made Gawęndzyk swear the object had not been stolen from a church. Samsonka denied all charges, including knowing that the “cup” was from a church, ostensibly contradicting her earlier testimony that she had been suspicious and had made Gawęndzyk swear it was not. She claimed that as soon as she realized what the object was, it was taken to the castle and Gawęndzyk was arrested. Witnesses, including three women who served Samsonka and her husband, all confirmed that Gawęndzyk frequently drank vodka with his father and his brothers in Samsonka’s house, “mostly on Sundays.” One of the witnesses, a servant of four years, corroborated Samsonka’s earlier testimony that when Samson had found out about the ciborium, he became quite upset with his wife and immediately went to the castle. But despite Gawęndzyk’s repeated incrimination and the two priests’ insistence on her complicity, Samsonka was judged innocent and set free, likely because of a decree issued by the town’s owner, Stanisław Lubomirski, after an appeal by Jews. Significantly, Lubomirski was also the palatine of Rus and had been a key figure in the legal battle over jurisdiction at the host desecration trial in Przemyśl a few years earlier. His intervention did not deny the possibility of “such a horrendous crime,” but implied that the accusation may have arisen from “delusion” and vengeance. The town owner ordered that three Jewish and three Christian witnesses be found to confirm this charge and that, to prove her innocence, Freyda Samsonka take an oath on the Torah scroll in the local synagogue. As Samsonka took the oath, she called for a divine punishment of sickness, suffering, being hit by lightning, or being punished “like Lot’s wife who was turned into ‘a pillar of salt’ ” if she “was indeed guilty” of the crime. The three Jewish witnesses took their oath in the synagogue at the same time, and the three Christian witnesses, all “nobles,” took theirs publicly on the cross at the town’s marketplace: “This

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Jewess Samsonka accused by Mathias Gawęndzyk of inciting him to steal the Most Holy Sacrament is not guilty of this deed.” Freyda Samsonka and her husband apparently lived in Wiśnicz for years to come, albeit with some financial difficulty; in 1642, they were both obliged to pay off a huge debt of thirteen hundred złotys that Freyda’s husband, Samson, had incurred some years before that, and in 1644, they sold their house. Unlike the trials in Sochaczew, Bochnia, and Przemyśl, Samsonka’s case in Wiśnicz did not become a cause célèbre, and her life was spared. Still, the outcome of her trial did serve to protect Catholic sacred objects and to affirm Catholic dogmas. The case illustrates that court officials took allegations of sacrilege against Jews seriously. It also underscores the power of host desecration legends, the political dimensions of accusations of sacrilege, and, as in Przemyśl, “the power of jurisdiction.” Although Gawęndzyk died accusing Samsonka, and even though local priests pushed for a formal trial, the local authorities—notably including the owner of Wiśnicz, Stanisław Lubomirski—were reluctant to convict her and turn the theft of a church object into an anti-Jewish affair. Perhaps, after the trials in nearby Bochnia and in Przemyśl, Lubomirski understood what was at stake, or possibly, as an owner of the town, he sought to avoid violence and disruption. The “power of jurisdiction” also was manifest through literal application of existing statutes and the dismissal of accusations against Jews on procedural grounds. In 1577, Nachum Abramovich, a Jew from the small town of Wojnia (or Wohyn, as identified by Hanna Węgrzynek) in the Brest Litovsk region, was accused by local burghers (meshchane) of killing a Christian child. Abramovich was arrested and taken to prison, whereupon local Jews brought to the court’s attention a privilege granted to them by the king and inscribed in the city records, guaranteeing that, among other things, in the case of such accusations against Jews, four Christian and three Jewish witnesses must be found to support those charges, and that criminal cases against Jews must not be tried in local magistrates’ courts, but in royal courts. In Wojnia, the Jews demanded that Abramovich be released on bail, that the case be transferred to a royal official, and that the accuser be punished. The court in Wojnia, in contrast to that in Przemyśl decades later, owned up to the demands and rejected the case on procedural grounds, though not without investigation. It summoned two Christian witnesses, Marina and Kakhna, both servants in Jewish homes in town. The summary of the case proceedings indicates that “the meshchane were forcing [the two women] to testify against Jews in this case. But these Christian women, servants in Jewish homes, denied that the


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Jew, Nachum, had done anything like killing a child.” Abramovich’s trial reveals the court’s insistence on following proper laws and procedures, and brings to light the complex relationships between Jews and certain burghers. As a result, it also underscores the role of court officials in the process. According to the surviving court record, Marina, who served in the house of another Jew, Manasse, recounted that “when she came to the market square, she heard the burghers talking among themselves, blaming this Jew Nachum for killing a Christian child.” She returned to her “master’s house” and told Manasse’s wife what she had just heard in town. Manasse’s wife told her husband, and he was incredulous. While they were discussing the rumors, the burghers arrested Abramovich, and a town official went to see the body of the slain child and found it intact, “without the sign of the cross on his forehead.” After the inspection, the child was buried in the local Orthodox church, but was dug up again the following day, and this time the sign of a cross had appeared on his forehead. Nevertheless, Abramovich was released. Local authorities had followed the letter of the law and did not yield, as they would in other places, to the pressures from the burghers. These pressures from burghers were palpable decades later in another trial, also in Wojnia. Even though, this time, the court failed to follow laws and procedures, which led to the excessive torture, suffering, and death of one woman, it refused to take the bait and persecute Jews. The court summary, submitted by a court clerk, is peppered with unusual details that retain the drama behind the events and reveal the court’s— or at least the court clerk’s— reluctance to accept the charges, and a tacit acknowledgment that the case was set up with ulterior motives. Soon after a mother, Maryna Janowa Litwinianka, found her small son, Demian, dead in a marsh, some burghers began to scheme to use the boy’s death in an effort to expel local Jews. Two townsmen— one, Jerzy Łomski, the drowned child’s godfather—accused her of killing her child and then tampered with evidence (the body had no sings of violence when found, but it had fresh stab wounds when delivered by the men to court). As Litwinianka was led out of the prison on her way to trial, a crowd gathered, and she prostrated herself on the ground and cried out: “I left my dear child without any wounds.” She turned to Łomski, and said: “This is nobody’s work but yours; you have been taunting me for a long time, and I do not know why. You were driving me out of that empty lot, quarrelling with Jews I don’t know why, saying that this lot is [your] wife’s because of some debt.” The court record

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includes a rather lengthy monologue in which Litwinianka apparently criticized judicial procedure in front of everyone: And the town officer Adam Golamowski, without trying me properly, ordered that I be tied up at the gallows and beaten with rods, [after] four hours I began to pass out; and having tortured me but having received no information from me, because I said nothing against Jews, he ordered me back to the prison. The next morning [Golamowski] ordered that I be expelled from the town. When I was lying in the fields beaten and tortured, some town burghers [panowie mieszczanie] seized me again and put me back to prison . . . and at night they sent Wasek Kowal and [Jerzy Łomski to pressure me] to tell on the Jews. They said: “do not be afraid, you will not suffer. Because of these Jews, we Christians cannot feed ourselves, the town Wojnia is theirs, not ours.”

Town officials found no incriminating signs of blood at Litwinianka’s house. They called for witnesses to come forward, and ordered her to be interrogated again under torture. Asked explicitly “if this was done by Jews,” Litwinianka responded, “I would rather testify against my own father than against Jews.” Since her arrest, “she had no peace from [Łomski] and [Kowal], and other town burghers, who were urging me to tell on Jews.” Some people in town began to spread a rumor that Jews had sent a potion for her to drink in prison so she might withstand torture, but a court official noted that there was no window in the prison and that he held the key; therefore, the people “falsely accuse innocent Jews.” Still, other town officials ordered Litwinianka to be tortured once more; she refused again to accept any guilt for the death of her child and continually refused to accuse Jews. A few days later, some commoners (pospólstwo) came to the court and stated that they also would not testify against Jews “because we do not have any evidence against them and we did not hear about it from anyone.” When rumors spread that the burghers tried to implicate Jews, Jews appealed to royal officials for help. One such royal official, Jan Perepecza, “summoned by the Jews,” protested against these accusations in an effort to have the case transferred to the royal court. After Perepecza’s intervention, the court summoned Litwinianka once again, but she was too weak from torture. “I am ready to die,” she said, “I prefer to die to suffering such pain from such cruel torture, and, when I was tortured without any reason I did not tell on anyone, and am not telling on


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anyone now. I am ready to leave this world because I could not live any more.” Litwinianka died in prison three days later. It will never be known whether her last recorded words were true or, for that matter, her long monologue at the beginning of her travails, but the court clerk’s decision to include them shows at least that her apparent insistence on her innocence and on the innocence of the Jews had not gone unnoticed. The inclusion of her last words, and of statements implicating Łomski, perhaps suggests that the court official responsible for drafting the report of the trial understood the sinister nature of the accusation, even if the court itself did not follow procedures and applied torture excessively. By giving voice to some but not all actors of the trial, the scribe created a compelling story that is rather sympathetic to Litwinianka and the Jews and which highlights the complexity of JewishChristian relations in this urban Polish setting. Litwinianka’s trial, along with others that turned more deadly for the Jews, demonstrates that accusations against Jews were sometimes used deliberately by local burghers and officials to settle disputes of internal town politics or to resolve personal problems. Yet, Litwinianka’s insistence on the innocence of Jews (and her apparent willingness to die for it), the testimonies of other people, and the reactions of some town and royal officials, perhaps even the court clerk himself, suggest that not everyone accepted anti-Jewish accusations and the myths on which they were based. Trials turned into public displays of anti-Jewish sentiments only when officials did accept anti-Jewish myths and accusations and agreed to pursue the charges.

Ritual Murder—Another Case of Politicizing Crime Host desecration accusations were not the only charges in which religion and politics led to spectacles of anti-Jewish violence. This is apparent in the political dimensions of religious violence against Jews in the charges that Jews killed Christian children, the subtext of the two cases in Wojnia. Such accusations, enhanced with religious rhetoric, had emerged in the Middle Ages: first, as ritual murder, whereby Jews killed Christian children, usually boys, to reenact Jesus’s crucifi xion; and, second, as a blood libel, whereby Jews killed Christian children to obtain blood for ritual or medicinal purposes. Both premises were similar to those that would later be attached to, and sometimes conflated with, host desecration legends. Ritual murder accusations entered Poland in the sixteenth century, along with host desecration accusations.

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Nuncio Luigi Lippomano mentioned ritual murder in his report on the host desecration trial in Sochaczew in 1556. Historian Hanna Węgrzynek has compiled a long list of blood libel, or ritual murder accusations, in Poland before the mid-seventeenth century, but not all of those cases can be confirmed in archival documentation; those that can are predominantly from the eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that were dominated by Eastern Christianity, like Wojnia in the Brest Litovsk region, where the burghers sought to implicate Jews in the deaths of Christian boys. When it came to anti-Jewish accusations, there seems to have been a geographical and religious split in Poland, with host desecration accusations dominating the western, Catholic territories and ritual murder, or blood libels, appearing with greater frequency in territories dominated by Eastern Christianity, at least until the latter half of the seventeenth century. As Caroline Bynum has argued, host desecration stories and charges emerged and intensified in the late medieval period, when the spread of eucharistic cults was combined with the clergy’s refusal to allow the laity access to Communion with wine. In Catholicism, the doctrine of transubstantiation was central; it served to solidify structures of the Church hierarchy, the position of the clergy, and divisions between them and the laity. In Eastern Christian churches, although the idea of the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ existed, transformation was not believed to occur during the eucharistic liturgy, as in Catholic Mass, but during the so-called epiclesis, after the eucharistic liturgy, when the Holy Spirit, implored by the priest, turns the Communion elements into the body and blood of Christ. Before the epiclesis, out of the view of the congregation, the priests perform the proskomidia, or prothesis, the Liturgy of Preparation, a reenactment of Jesus’s passion. During proskomidia, the priest uses a spear, symbolizing the spear with which Jesus’s side was pierced during the crucifi xion; he cuts the Communion bread four times, removing the prosphoron, the centerpiece of one of the loaves, also called amnon, or the “lamb,” because it became “the lamb of God.” He cuts the prosphoron crosswise into four parts, and stands it. The prosphoron is pierced on its side with the knife, in reenactment of the piercing of Jesus. Only then does the priest move to the epiclesis, the eucharistic liturgy, and implore the Holy Spirit to transform the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ. In Eastern Christian churches, because the “crucifixion” happens outside of public view during the proskomidia, the Communion itself is not a reminder of the sacrifice and suffering of Christ, but is “an encounter with the living, resurrected God.” Unlike in


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the Catholic Church, where each consecrated host becomes the body of Christ and where the consecrated wafer is venerated as God also outside of the eucharistic liturgy, in Eastern Christian churches, the Communion bread is always covered and never venerated, except during the liturgy. The parts of the loaf not used in Communion, the antidoron, are blessed and distributed to the faithful after the liturgy. The threat Protestants posed to the doctrine of transubstantiation was, thus, greater for the Catholic Church than for the Eastern Christian. Because of these significant differences between the Catholic and the Eastern Christian liturgies, host desecration accusations did not spread into eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth dominated by Eastern Christian churches; instead, animosity against Jews was channeled there through accusations of Jews killing Christian children, even when those accusations were made by Catholics. By the seventeenth century, as host desecration accusations waned with the diminishing Protestant threat in western Poland-Lithuania, accusations of ritual murder, or blood libel, increased. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ritual murder accusations gradually replaced host desecration accusations there. The complexity of the behindthe-scenes dynamics and pressures did not disappear, and ritual murder accusations became the primary forum for religiously and politically motivated anti-Jewish persecution; they were promoted, just as tales of host desecration, by books and pamphlets. If host desecration accusations served to affirm the sanctity of Catholic spaces and the validity of Catholic teachings, ritual murder and blood libel trials served to promote and arouse animosity against Jews or to pursue specifically political goals. Still, as in Wojnia, persecution of the Jews did not erupt every time a Christian child was missing, but only when it coincided with convergence of political and religious forces, as in cases of sacrilege. In May 1747, Jan Józef Tysowski, a court official in Krzemieniec, a town in the eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, began a new volume of criminal court records. On the verso of the title page, he wrote a poem, dated May 22, 1747: Oh, you are a just judge, Oh, Good God, Order Jews to be judged for blood, Do not allow anyone to muddle in falsehood.

He warned that any “false and unjust judge” was


 A traitor of his own soul Because whoever saves Jews’ lives Eternal hell he prepares for himself

And he pleaded with God to Bring him back, Oh God, to your holy blood, Lest a judge like that be beheaded himself. Amen, I, Tysowski, seal and conclude And ready my soul for God.

The summary of a blood libel trial in April 1747 in the town of Zasław in eastern Poland-Lithuania follows the poem in the court records. Around Easter that year, the highly mutilated body of a man had been found in the mud behind an inn. The body was “pierced, all fingers of the right hand were cut off, veins cut up to the elbow, bones broken; from the left hand, three fingers were cut off, veins ripped open up to the armpit, broken bones; on the left leg, veins were ripped open up to the knee, three toes were cut off, on the right leg, the skin was removed from the calve; teeth were bashed, and the whole body was bruised.”  In highly stylized rhetoric, the document states that Jewish guilt was revealed when four Jews came to see the body and it began to bleed. The accusation was sealed when Zoruch Leybowicz, an aspirant convert, confirmed that “it was nobody else’s deed but of those Jews who are now in prison.”  The court document offers a confusing account of Jewish rituals, portraying Jews as demonic, superstitious, and in need of Christian blood, and includes confessions of other Jews admitting guilt under torture. At the end of the trial, the court issued an unusually cruel verdict against eight Jews, a verdict that appears in no legal handbook available in Poland: Therefore, the court decrees the most serious and cruel punishment for this serious crime committed on an innocent Christian by the infidel nation living in this Catholic state, through torture and killing in order to obtain Christian blood for the superstitions of this despised Jewry. . . . First, Morduch Jankielowicz should be impaled alive by the executioner. The infidel Gerszon Chaskielowicz should be first flayed, then his heart should be removed, and his body quartered, his entrails displayed on the gallows’ pales. Moszko Majorowicz’s arms and legs should be cut off up to the knees and elbows, his torso with his head should be impaled, and the cut off legs and hands displayed on the pales. Lejba Mortchowicz should


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be quartered alive, his head displayed on a pale, and entrails wrapped around the beam. Abramko Szkolnik should be impaled alive. Berko Awrasiowy should be first flayed of two strips of skin, and then quartered alive, the four parts displayed on pales, head on a picket, and entrails wrapped around the pales. Moszko Szulimowicz, flayed of four strips of skin, and quartered, parts hung around. . . . Berko . . . deserves a severe punishment . . . but the court, having taken into consideration that he had confessed voluntarily and denounced others in this godless crime, sentences him to a lesser punishment, that is he should be beheaded in the market square, his body hooked by the ribs near his heart and hung on the gallows, his head nailed.

Although this sentencing decree lists eight Jews, other documents suggest that four, perhaps five, were executed. The event was so traumatic for the local Jewish community that a prayer was composed to commemorate “the souls of the martyrs of Zasław,” who gave up their lives faithful to God. “Dov Ber Abraham . . . went in joy like the joy at one’s son’s wedding. And he gave up his soul and his body for God.” The brief prayer, said each year on the 17th of Iyar (April–May) for more than a century, mentioned four other “martyrs of Zasław.” The court summary of the affair was not a typical legal document; it appears to have been constructed deliberately, not only to justify the court’s action, as most court documents do, but also to broadcast the events across the region. It was ordered to “be sent around the region . . . 1st to Warsaw into the hands of His Majesty the King, 2nd to the printer, who is to print it word for word, 3rd to the hands of His Highness Duke Sanguszko, 4th to the hands of the Duke of Lithuania, 5th to chancellery of Krzemieniec, 6th to be inscribed in the criminal records and released on May 18th, 1747.”  An official copy of the court proceedings with a seal dated June 17 can be found in the Sanguszko archive in Cracow. As the court official wished, the text reached the printer and was published as cheap pamphlets at least twice by anonymous printer(s). Duke Paweł Sanguszko, the grand marshall of Lithuania and the owner of the town of Zasław, sent a letter of thanks to the anonymous official (perhaps Tysowski himself ) who had ordered printing of the decree “for the perpetual memory of the nefarious crime.” The letter itself was issued as a small quarto leaflet, “for information, lest there be any doubt about the Zasław Decree against Jews accused of killing a Christian, published this year.”

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In early modern Poland, the fate of each criminal case seems to have depended on the will of local lay and religious authorities. Many cases easily could have become occasions for full-fledged anti-Jewish violence had the authorities wanted to make them so. Outbreaks of religious violence often were tied to a contest over influence and power, as in Sochaczew in 1556 and Przemyśl in 1630, or to economic competition, as in Bochnia and also in Przemyśl, both contests enhanced by religious animosity. Without such contest, a crime was often seen as just a crime, and was adjudicated accordingly.

Adjudicating Violent Crime—Jews and Christians in Courts Victims of violent crimes, such as robberies and murders, were of all faiths and often targeted not because they were Christians or Jews, but for ordinary reasons like greed or lust. Perpetrators of crimes often specifically targeted Jews, but surviving records suggest that Jews were targeted not qua Jews because of their identity or religion, but as merchants or pawnbrokers who had money or objects that criminals desired, or for other reasons entirely unrelated to religious or ethnic identity. The courts seem to have treated these instances of violence between Jews and Christians as regular crime. Such was apparently the case in 1625, when Lucas Rybak, his wife, Eva Condusowa Luterka, and two accomplices—Joannes Wisniewski, a shady character also known as Wisienka and Szczypowski, and Stanislaus Gay, or Gaiek— were accused of robbing Jewish merchants. They were said to have stolen clothes, valuable textiles, golden ornaments, buttons, “Jewish books,” and, of course, money. Gaiek wore the stolen clothes to court. The court decreed that the accused, “having forgotten the fear of God, and ignored the severity of the common law, dared to rob the aforementioned Jews on a free road,” and sentenced them to death by hanging, a sentence reserved for thieves. Money was similarly behind a violent raid by a nobleman on the house of a Jewish couple, Jacob Kopel and his wife, Freyda Koplowa. One winter night in 1663, the nobleman, Joannes Kasperski, and his armed companions invaded the house, killed Jacob, wounded others, and stole a large amount of valuables, money, silver and gold jewelry, pearls, their daughter’s earrings, ornaments, clothes, and many other items. From behind bars, Kasperski protested his incarceration, and because of his status as a nobleman, the case was referred to the Crown Tribunal in Lublin, Poland’s court of highest instance.


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The final sentence is unknown because records of the Royal Tribunal were destroyed by fire during World War II, but the case was treated by the court as one of violence and robbery that did not involve religious identity. Such was the case of a commoner apprehended in Cracow for murdering a Jew, among other things. He was interrogated on the day of his arrest and executed promptly the following day. In another case in 1696, Semion Kielmach, from a small village near the town of Chełm, was summoned to court to answer a complaint filed by Abram Izakowicz, a Jew from Szczebrzeszyn. Izakowicz had been ambushed and injured by Kielmach and his farmhand; his money, worth some seventy złotys, and clothing were stolen. Courts in smaller towns like Chełm often sought to avoid the costly death penalty; hence, the court’s sentence was two hundred lashes, an unusually high number, and Kielmach’s farmhand was sentenced to one hundred lashes. Both men also were to repay Izakowicz for his losses in property and health, and to contribute several pounds of wax to local churches. The court warned them not to commit another similar offense or they would be sentenced to death. Most such robbers were equal-opportunity criminals, willing to rob anyone who had something of value—Jews or Christians, noblemen or peasants, even clergy. Some stole only money and valuables, while others took anything that came along, including “meat, bread, beer, vodka, hay, and oats.”  In 1645, two Christian thieves arrested for stealing horses admitted under interrogation to robbing anyone who had possessions of value. Among their victims were noblemen, Christian merchants, and Jews. They confessed that, five years earlier, they had decided to try a new method of stealing that they thought would be more effective— setting fires in towns and then looting while the home and shop owners were putting out the fire and trying to save their property. They had set fire to three houses in Żółkwia, near Lwów, and about “twenty weeks later,” they set fire on the outskirts of Lwów because, they said, “rich Jews lived there.”  Six houses burned down that night. Running off with four bundles of loot, the arsonists sold the loot to a Christian fence. Soon afterward, they set fire in another town and ten houses burned down, this time with unimpressive loot: “two sheep skin coats, and a Russian dress.”  They sold the coats to a peasant and the dress to a Jew in Beresteczko. Religious identity was apparently irrelevant to the court. Arson was a more serious offense than theft; for that crime, the two men were burned at the stake.

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Some robbers did take advantage of Jewish religious practices, simply because they provided opportunity. For example, some robbers broke into Jewish homes and businesses late on Friday nights, after the Sabbath had begun. In 1630, Adam Lublinski was arrested and brought before the court in Lublin. He had broken into the house of a Jew on a Friday night and stolen goods. It was not his first crime. When asked if he “had ever been in the hands of the executioner,” he said that he had, for stealing “six silver spoons, a fancy coat, and a sword.” For that offense, the court had ordered mutilation—amputation of his nose and both ears. Afterward, Lublinski had wandered around begging, in Poland and elsewhere in Europe, sometimes as far as Rome, where he bought statues of Saints Peter and Paul as souvenirs. In Lublin, now, when he was asked why he had been brought before the court, he answered “because of Jews, whom I do not know and I do not know their names, and that is because I slid down a trough into a Jew’s house on a Friday night, stealing paper, needles, buttons, pepper, money, some linen, socks, knives,” and other odds and ends. Lublinski was tortured; the sentence has not been preserved, but it is likely that he was executed since that court was seldom merciful and tended to sentence thieves to death, especially repeat offenders like Lublinski. Similarly, in Wiśnicz, the small town where Jews from Bochnia settled after their expulsion in 1606, two thieves, Woyciech and Stanisław, broke into the house of a Jew, Isaac Andzliowic, on a Sabbath night. They dug their way under the storage area—“it was not difficult”— and stole valuable spices, Turkish thread, costly textiles, silver buttons, sugar, and many other items. They had planned their robbery well, visiting Andzliowic and drinking at his house a week earlier on Friday, for reconnaissance, and even buying a little pepper from him to keep from provoking suspicion. The two were sentenced to death: Woyciech, as the main instigator, was sentenced to hanging; Stanisław, as an accomplice, was to be decapitated, a penalty considered easier and more honorable. In the end, the sentences were commuted to decapitation for Woyciech, and flogging and amputation of ears for Stanisław. Notably, their sentence was more severe than one issued by the same court just a few months earlier for robbing a synagogue. Similarly, Abraham Jachimowicz Kożuchowski, from a prominent Jewish family in Kazimierz, sued three Christian men for breaking into his store at midnight on a Friday. They had heard “of riches within.” They stole men’s and women’s clothing, earrings, a silver cup, and six swords. The sentence has not been preserved. It is unclear why Friday night was the night of choice, but


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it may well have been because of an expectation that Jews would not fight back on the Sabbath, when work was forbidden— even to light a candle to see who had entered the house, thus enabling thieves to escape unrecognized— or because some Jews might have been inebriated and deep asleep after celebrating the Sabbath dinner. Many attacks, fights, and squabbles were the result of drinking or of insults; at times, Jews may have been caught in “a cross-fire,” or were participants or appeared in the background as hosts of Christians who drank or rented rooms in Jewish homes. In Cracow, for example, some drunken thugs who attacked and robbed a Jew were captured by “students” and delivered to the castle court for punishment. The court sentenced them to death. In Sawina, a small town near Lublin owned by the bishop of Chełm, Tomaszowa, a Christian woman who was a cook in a Jewish house, testified that another Christian woman, Wieczławowa, had stormed into her employer’s house, grabbed his beard, pulled him toward a wall, and “smashed him against the wall and punched him in the face several times.” Apparently, at some point, the Jewish home owner had referred to Wieczławowa as “a whore,” or perhaps had bragged behind her back that he had slept with her, since in court he was made to say, “I have not made Wieczławowa a whore and I do not know anything about her, but that she is chaste.” Similarly, in Zamość, a private town some 60 km away from Chełm, a Christian woman complained against a Jewish woman for speaking “offensive words injuring [her] honor.” The court sentenced the Jewish woman to sit in pillory in front of the synagogue for five hours and to pay a fine to the castle. And, in Chełm in 1700, Katherina, a widow, displayed wounds in court and complained that a Christian woman had attacked her in the house of a Jewess, Brunowa Krakowianka. A Jewish surgeon had been summoned to help. Fights and insults were not limited to incidents between Jews and Christians; Jews, like Christians, engaged in fights and insults among themselves as well, and for similar reasons. In 1699, two Jews began fighting when Kielman Jozwowicz reminded a man named Leyzorek of a debt and demanded payment. Leyzorek refused and apparently insulted Kielman, who, in turn, punched Leyzorek, whereupon the latter’s son, Aron (or Orun) joined in and began beating Kielman. According to two witnesses, Kielman had said to Leyzorek’s son, “You bastard, you are neither a Jew nor a Pole, you eat pork with the Poles.” Aron grabbed Kielman by the throat, pulled him out on

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the street, and, wielding a knife, said, “You, son-of-a-bitch, say I eat pork! I should cut your throat for these words.” At times, as in the case of Szmul Dubiński, convicted of blasphemy and burned at the stake in 1724, incidents involving Jews and Christians did escalate and illuminate questions of Jewish-Christian relations that went beyond the initial dispute. In one such instance, Jadwiga, a young woman who was a cook at the house of Kalman, a prominent Jew in Sawina, died. Before dying, Jadwiga apparently said that she had been beaten “with fists” by Kalman’s wife and injured. Some witnesses testified that the servant and Kalman’s wife had a turbulent relationship and that violence had not been uncommon in their house. Accused of murder, Kalman and his wife pointed out that the body itself showed no signs of violence: “There were no injuries, nor other signs.” The court agreed. Still, Jadwiga’s death did raise questions about the legality of the woman’s ser vice to Jews, in “violation of spiritual and royal laws.” The escalation and accusation in this case appears to reflect an increasingly uneasy relationship between Kalman and the Christian inhabitants of Sawina. In this context, the servant’s death was ripe for exploitation, yet the court did not punish the Jewish couple for murder; they were ordered to pay a fine for violating the law prohibiting Jews from hiring Christian servants, with half of the fine to be paid to the city and half to the local Catholic church, earmarked for “a white chasuble.” The Jewish couple, in effect, financed ritual vestments for a local priest. Even when Jews may have committed crimes, courts often paid little attention to their religion. In 1635, a nobleman, Stephan Owadowski, accused his servant, Sloma, a Jew from Międzyboż, of stealing jewels from his manor. Sloma told the court that he had told other Jews about the jewels, whereupon they gave him food and vodka and encouraged him to steal them from his master and bring the jewels to them. He received 118 złotys for the loot, and bought himself a fancy cloak (żupan). Who had persuaded him to commit this crime? “The Jews whom I had mentioned,” he said, adding that he would not have committed the crime had they not encouraged him to do so. The court wanted to be sure that Sloma did not implicate the Jews “out of anger.” During torture, he confirmed his earlier testimony. Three days later, at sentencing, the court noted that Sloma, “though brought up in Hebrew error and perfidy from the cradle,” was now known as Joannes, “a name he assumed in the sacrosanct baptism the day before.” Despite Sloma’s last-minute conversion to Catholicism, he was sentenced to death by hanging as a com-


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mon thief would have been, but there is no evidence that other Jews were prosecuted.

Partners in Crime—Jewish-Christian Gangs Although it might seem obvious that crime involving Jews and Christians would have a religious dimension, in everyday Jewish-Christian relations, even in crime, the lines appear less sharp, and relationships between the two groups seem to have been much more entangled. In partnership with Christians, some Jews participated in and abetted crimes against other Jews. In 1634, some members of a gang of noblemen and their servants were captured and tried in Lublin after robbing Jews. One nobleman, Joannes Sepkowski, related that after he had served with a number of magnates, including the prominent Duke Czartoryski, he had joined a gang near Włodzimierz in the eastern parts of Poland. They “often” stayed in the suburbs with a Jew, who “convinced [two noblemen] Philipowski and Jaroszkowski to rob some Włodzimierz Jews.” The gang attacked these Jews on their way to Lublin and “took money, horses . . . silver spoons.” Sepkowski was captured two days later, but at his interrogation under torture, he persistently denied that he had been among the robbers. “I am not guilty, even though I was present during the robbery, I opposed [it], I did not take any money, I did not attack.” He shifted the blame to another nobleman and his servants. Another man interrogated in the case, Wojciech Kaznowski, also blamed Jaroszkowski as “the chief instigator of the robbery,” and named others, Philipowski, Krzeczkowski, and Mikucki “with his servants” as accomplices. Philipowski and Krzeczkowski “had spied on the Jews . . . thanks to the Jew from Włodzimierz . . . named Chorin who walks with his head wrapped.” Both Sepkowski and Kaznowski were interrogated under torture, and both were sentenced to decapitation. The third to be interrogated was Cyprian Mikucki; he gave the court an impressive list of noblemen who participated in the gang and more details about the whole operation. The Jew, Chorin (or Somer, as another witness called him), had given them information about other Jews traveling with money, receiving as a reward “a horse [podjezdek] and three pieces of pork fat flitch” from Jaroszkowski, and Mikucki added, “the Jew himself was supposed to go [with us].” Mikucki got an astronomical sum, one thousand złotys, from the robbery. Unlike Kaznowski and Sepkowski, both of whom were caught soon after the robbery, Mikucki managed to escape and avoid accusation for

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quite a while. He traveled across the country from Włodzimierz to Krosno and Cracow, returning to Bełżyce near Lublin. After his arrest, Mikucki was sent to torture and confirmed his earlier testimony. No record of the sentence is preserved in surviving documents. Robberies on the roads often required careful planning with a network of spies and accomplices, some of whom were Christians, Jews, innkeepers, and vagabonds. In 1645, Stanisław Szymański was implicated in a theft of horses, a common crime at the time. During investigation both before and during torture, Szymański confessed to this and many other crimes, including armed robberies, most recently of a Jew near Lublin from whom he had stolen five hundred złotys. Under torture, he told of seeing two men murdered— one a nobleman whose head was cut off, and another a Jew from whom he and his companions had stolen two hundred złotys; the Jew was killed near a small town not far from Lublin. The case grew complex, several men were summoned and interrogated. One, Alexander Wudka, who “keeps loose women,” his real name Lewicki, said that during a trip from “one tribunal to the next,” that is, between Piotrków and Lublin, he heard about a murder-robbery on the road. The rumor spread around “the inns where we keep our harlots” that a woman, “a harlot,” had been killed. Wudka said that he knew the killers, Krasicki and Pałucki from Warsaw, and had allowed them and prostitutes to stay in his house, profiting from the killings. Wudka was sentenced to death by quartering, with his body parts to be displayed in public “lest a crime be left unpunished.” Next to be interrogated in this complex case was Joannes Jasiewicz. Once employed as a scribe of a nobleman, Jasiewicz had started gambling and fallen into debt, whereupon he and his companions had begun to steal horses, and then took part in increasingly violent robberies, attacking traveling merchants—both Jews and Christians— on their way from fairs with money and merchandise. He said that the gang leaders were noblemen, the Krasicki brothers, who had connections with various Jews along the way; one Jew, Szmuyło of Stomiłowa Kamionka, and his partners, including his brother, spied on merchants and passed the information to the Krasicki brothers’ gang. One night, Szmuyło’s brother arrived with the news that a wealthy Jew, the agent of a nobleman, was about to start on a journey with thirty thousand złotys in cash. Krasicki ordered his companions to be ready before dawn so they could leave in time to encounter the Jew along the way. They robbed him of cash and valuables, but found the loot disappointing—instead of


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thirty thousand złotys, the Jew had only “two thousand, a box of spoons,” some golden thread, sable fur skins, and two dresses made of expensive cloth, “which I understand they gave to the Jew for spying,” Jasiewicz said. When Krasicki asked the Jew, “Why do you have so little money? You were supposed to have thirty thousand,” the Jew responded, “I had, but I re-distributed it, fearing I might be robbed, because there was a rumor that a nobleman had been robbed.” The robbers severed the ligaments of at least one horse “so the [travelers] would not chase them.” Krasicki divided the loot: Jasiewicz received ten thalers and one of the uninjured horses, others got one hundred złotys each, the Jewish spy got the dresses and some money, and Szmuyło some cash. Szmuyło told the gang about other Jewish travelers and the group attacked them, too, pocketing four thousand złotys. Jasiewicz said that some of the Jews had been spying for Krasicki and his gang for long decades, some even “since youth.” Jasiewicz himself was sentenced to death. The court examined one more member of the Krasicki gang, Alexander Pałuski, who had joined only that year. Pałuski related a number of robberies of Jewish, Ruthenian, Volhynian, and other merchants, as well as of traveling noblemen. The robbers again worked with a Jewish spy, “Marek from the Ukraine, who spied on Jews, wandering from fair to fair and pointing out to them Jews who had money.”  Pałuski confessed to killing two people (one woman and one man); sentenced to death, he and was executed with Jasiński; Pałuski’s right hand was amputated first, as the hand that “had committed the murder.” Both men were to be quartered alive, their heads severed, and their body parts displayed in public. Like many criminals, they donated their possessions to the Church—Pałuski to the Bernardine fathers in Lublin, “so they may pray to Lord God for my soul and say holy mass in my name.”  One more accomplice in the court’s custody remained to be examined, Piranski, a bathhouse operator in Cracow. Piranski told the court that “the robbers had Jewish spies in Cracow, Marek and Moszko. Marek walks around dressed as a Pole, with a beard cut in an Italian fashion, Moszko dressed in a Jewish manner in a overcoat, with a yellow beard.”  For their ser vices as spies, Marek and Moszko had received horses. The court sentenced Piranski to live quartering, his head and body parts then to be displayed on poles along public roads. Piranski’s will granted his house in Kazimierz, his other possessions, and debts owed to him to his wife, and five hundred złotys to the “Dominican fathers in Lublin” to pray and say mass for his soul. Such reversed sacralization through objects obtained by less-than-honest means had

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become accepted by the Church, as the objects seemingly no longer tainted with crime became an endowment for the sacred ritual of a mass. Like these torturous cases of multiple crimes, most violence in crime appears not to have been religiously motivated, but rather provoked by greed, defense of honor, or alcohol. Religious violence that accompanied crime often served a specific political or economic function. To be sure, religious tensions were increasingly acute between Jews and Christians after the Reformation, but relationships between them, crimes or accusations of crime, and relevant sentences were not cast in a single mold of religious or ethnic identity. Even libels against Jews, which occurred with some frequency in Christian Europe during the medieval and early modern eras, did not always gain traction in courts. In criminal attacks, Jews, who were often victims of violence, had not been singled out; in such common crimes, they became victims the same as others, not necessarily because of who they were but because of what they had and what others wanted.

Conclusions: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation The focus on persecution of Jews that arose as a consequence of anti-Jewish accusations of host desecration and ritual murder has led to a conviction that violence and crime involving Jews and Christians was always religiously motivated, and that Jews could not expect fairness in Christian courts. Archival evidence, however, suggests that for Jews who sought justice within the parameters of the law at the time, the outcome was not predetermined to their detriment. Jews could press charges against Christians, including nobles, and even brought suit against fellow Jews in Christian courts, thus violating established laws of Jewish legal autonomy that had been granted in royal privileges and established in the halakhah. The practice became so pernicious that even Jewish leaders had to rule against Jews suing other Jews in Christian courts. In 1623, for example, the Council of Lithuania, a supracommunity for Jews living in the Lithuanian part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, threatened to excommunicate any Jew who “willfully” took another Jew to a Christian court to “eradicate thorns from the vineyard.”  Jewish leaders understood that a total ban was impossible and urged consultation and guidance should a need arise to sue another Jew. Jewish leaders’ concerns were not entirely unfounded since the courts, staffed in Poland with officials who were untrained amateurs, were often employed in political struggles. During the Reformation, the politics of reli-


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gion had a significant impact on the competencies of lay courts, which were charged with adjudicating cases pertaining to religious matters, in the hope that they would be fairer to sympathizers with Protestant ideas than Catholic ecclesiastical courts, which would treat them as heretics. The result was the contrary. Without codified laws, and with legal handbooks derived from the medieval Speculum Saxonum (Saxon Mirror), the criminal code known as the Carolina—sponsored by Charles V, the Catholic emperor and opponent of Protestantism— and from Jodocus Damhouder’s Praxis Rerum Criminalium, which also embraced Catholic notions of sacrilege and sacred space, secular courts began to adjudicate cases about the sacred based on Catholic definitions. And, while the Catholic Church may have been struggling to affirm its sanctity and legitimacy, Polish secular courts helped affirm the Church’s power as the only true church. They did this by trying those accused of espousing ideas that challenged Catholic doctrines as blasphemers, and robbers of Catholic churches as sacrilegos, while at the same time, treating violations of non-Catholic places of worship as ordinary crimes. In an ironic twist, Reformation-era legal reforms that intended to weaken the power of the Church by limiting the jurisdiction of its courts instead led to solidifying its power. Thus, in Poland, the crime of sacrilege became a post-Reformation phenomenon, as did its most infamous manifestation—host desecration charges against Jews. In the aftermath of the Reformation, when religious identities of both individuals and the states were challenged and unsettled, and when access to power tended to shift depending on religious affiliations, persecution for the crime of sacrilege served to affirm religious truths and identities. The right and authority to define the sacred and the sacrilege became an instrument in political struggles for money and power. Exclusion from the realm of “the sacred” meant exclusion from power itself, and it meant social and political marginalization. Yet, by definition and logic, “the sacred” required “the profane,” and at times, “the sacred” required “sacrilege” as well. The crime of sacrilege, not limited to the charge of host desecration against Jews, encompassed robberies of Catholic churches and other forms of mishandling and misusing the Communion wafer. The majority of those punished for sacrilege, usually at the stake, were Christians. Jews, conversely, were accused only when extraneous conditions of religious, political, or economic nature coincided, and when court officials were willing to yield to pressures to bring such charges. In 1556 in Sochaczew, the papal nuncio, Luigi Lippomano, played such a crucial role; in Bochnia and in Przemyśl, local burghers pressed for charges against Jews in seeking to eliminate economic

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competition and assert their own power within the city. In contrast to ordinary crimes, for which both Jews and Christians were likely to be prosecuted, Jews were prosecuted and persecuted in cases of sacrilege only when Christian authorities, church or secular, were willing to pursue the accusations; when they did not, the accusations failed and Jews were spared. When charges were brought against Jews for host desecration, and later for ritual murder, the posing of charges mobilized a Jewish communal support network that was often successfully able to seek help from higher authorities, including bishops, kings, and palatines. However, Jewish community leaders distinguished between accusations of crime, such as theft or fencing, for which they did not want to take responsibility, and libels launched to accomplish political goals. It was the latter that led full-fledged intervention, to the chagrin of those who had a stake in persecuting Jews and often complained about the ability of Jews to bribe officials. Libels for political ends exposed the relationships between power structures that were invested in the outcome: the kings, the clergy, the nobles, and the magistrates and city councils. Ordinary Christians accused of sacrilege typically had no access to powerful individuals who would help them reach officials to save their lives. Their trials were often swifter and revealed none of the complex political wrangling that was evident in trials involving Jews. At most, Christians may have enlisted local clergy to intervene in commuting a sentence. Trials of poor Christians rarely became political causes célèbres, and they never resulted in published pamphlets, as did trials of prominent nobles like Kazimierz Łyszczyński, who was tried for atheism and blasphemy or, more frequently, trials in which the accused were prominent members of the Jewish community, usually synagogue officials or wealthy local individuals. In less-prominent trials of sacrilege, Jews often appeared as fences buying stolen church loot, but apparently were rarely prosecuted. At times, Jews themselves arrested Christians and delivered them to the magistrate for trial. Such cases raised no attention and produced no pamphlets because they were politically unimportant. Scholars have argued that the legends of host desecration and persecution of Jews ended with the Reformation. They may have ended in many places in western parts of Europe, especially in areas most affected by Protestant ideology. But in places where re-Catholicization succeeded, medieval legends of host desecration were employed to remind Christians confused by religious disputes of the presence of God therein; they served Counter-Reformation efforts and promoted the contested cult of the Eucharist, even in German


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lands. In Poland itself, however, host desecration legends and accusations were not a medieval phenomenon; they belonged to the post-Reformation era. And, although charges of sacrilege against Christians continued throughout the eighteenth century, similar charges against Jews had lost almost all political currency by the mid-seventeenth century, when Protestantism waned and its threat was less intensive, although still felt and referred to by the Church. To be sure, polemical anti-Jewish writers discussed “Jewish crimes against the most holy sacrament” even in the eighteenth century, but by then, charging Jews with ritual murder had replaced sacrilege as a stage for political battles over money and power.

Post-Reformation Poland has had a reputation of a “state without stakes,” as “an oasis of peace and security,” the embodiment of early modern tolerance. This tolerance has been said to be a result of “the constitutional and political system of Poland, and more specifically of the privileges enjoyed by the nobility.” Although “tolerance,” as the Polish historian Janusz Tazbir has argued, “did not save Poland’s Reformation from decline . . . it did spare the country bloody religious strife and it did help that decline to be gradual and painless.” For Tazbir, Reformation in Poland was like “a straw fire— quick to blaze up and quick to subside.” “No one,” he wrote, “can be burned in a straw fire as were the victims of religious fanaticism in western Europe” in the sixteenth century. It is true that Reformation in Poland was not long lasting and that Poland’s re-Catholicization was gradual. Still, there was religious violence. The process of reaffirmation of Catholic dogmas did not necessarily come through religious education and propaganda, nor was it found through “the inner dynamics and vitality of the Catholic Church,” but through the application of criminal law, the courts’ treatment of “the sacred,” and thus also their judgment of “the sacrilege.”  This process was certainly neither “painless” nor “peaceful”; many stakes were lit under those convicted of the crime of sacrilege. The stakes were lit, not despite “the constitutional and political system of Poland,” but as a consequence of legal transformations initiated by the nobles in the aftermath of the Reformation, which transferred religious matters into the hands of secular courts. In the absence of a strong king, it was the lay courts’ classification of Catholic spaces as the only “sacred” places and their adjudication of crimes of “sacrilege” that sent Jews and Christians alike to death by fire, that led to the re-Catholicization of Poland, and that helped shape the country’s religious identity.

Glossary

auto-da-fé. Literally, “an act of faith,” a public act of reconciliation with the Catholic Church. chausible. An outer garment worn by priests during a mass. chrism. A mixture of pure olive and balsam oils, blessed by a bishop and used in sacraments in the Catholic Church. ciborium. See also pyx. A vessel used to store consecrated Communion wafers. corporal. A linen cloth on which the eucharistic wafer and wine are placed. halakhah. (adj., halakhic). Jewish law. kahal. The board of governors of a Jewish community. monstrance. A vessel in which the eucharistic wafer is placed for public display. paten. A small, shallow plate usually made of precious metal and upon which the consecrated host is placed. pyx. See also ciborium. In the early modern period, the pyx was an alternate term for the ciborium; later, it came to signify a smaller metal box used to transport the consecrated host from a church to the home of a sick person unable to take Communion in a church. Sejm. The Polish parliament composed of the nobility. strappado. A method of torture by which a prisoner was pulled, either on a rack or by weights. tabernaculum. A receptacle near the altar in Roman Catholic churches in which the host is stored in the ciborium.

Abbreviations

A.A. AC AGAD AmCh AmJar AmKaz AmKr AmL AmPoz AmPrz AmSand AmSaw ARSI ASB ASKZ ASV

Archivi Arcis in Archivio Segreto Vaticano Acta Consularia in Archiwum Archidiecezjalne in Poznań Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych in Warsaw Akta miasta Chełma in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin Akta miasta Jarosławia in Archiwum Państwowe in Przemyśl Akta miasta Kazimierza in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (ul. Sienna) Akta miasta Krakowa in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (ul. Sienna) Akta miasta Lublina in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin Akta miasta Poznania in Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań Akta miasta Przemyśla in Archiwum Państwowe in Przemyśl Akta miasta Sandomierza Akta miasta Sawina in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu Akta Staropolskie Bochni in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (in Bochnia) Akta Sądu Komisaryjnego Zamojskiego in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin Archivio Segreto Vaticano in Vatican City (Città del Vaticano)

 ATK Bcz CC Pol.

sinner s on tr i a l Akta Trybyunału Koronnego in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin Biblioteka X. Czartoryskich in Cracow Castrensia Cracoviensia in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Wawel) Acta Polonia in Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI, Rome)

Note on Names and Terminology

During the premodern period covered by this book, the Polish state was transformed from a union of two independent states of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The actual unification took place in 1569. The terms “Poland” or the “Polish Crown” are therefore used to denote the western territories of the commonwealth. In cases where the eastern territories alone are discussed, they are so described. Towns and cities are identified throughout according to the terminology of the period, unless an English equivalent exists. For example, present-day Vilnius in Lithuania appears as Wilno and current-day Lvıv in Ukraine is referred to as Lwów. But for Kraków or Warszawa, for which English names exist, Cracow and Warsaw are used respectively. In the bibliography, the place names correspond to those in the publication itself, but current names are enclosed in brackets. Names appear the way they are shown in court records, often in Latinized form, if such exists. For example, the Polish woman Katarzyna Kucharzowa is referred to as Caterina Kucharzowa, as she was in court documents. The Latinized form is also easier for the English reader. All translations within the text—from Polish, Latin, Italian, Hebrew, and Yiddish— are mine, unless otherwise noted.

Notes

Introduction: From Sin to Crime . “It’s a Scandal,” Telegraph Journal, online edition, July 8, 2009, http:// telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/front/article/722036. . “Harper Accepted Host, Ate It: PMO, Speaker,” Montreal Gazette, online edition, July 8, 2009, http://www.montrealgazette.com/Life/Harper+accepted+host/ 1770777/story.html. . Tu Thanh Ha, “PM Didn’t Pocket Communion Wafer, Spokesman Says,” Globe and Mail, online edition, June 8, 2009, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ news/politics/pm-didnt-pocket-communion-wafer-spokesman-says/article1210809/, accessed July 8, 2009. . “LeBlanc Funeral Puts Harper in Communion Controversy,” CBC News, online edition, July 8, 2009, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/ 07/08/harper-archbishop.html. . Joseph Uranowski, “Prime Minister Stephen Harper Desecrated the Eucharist at Former Governor General Romeo LeBlanc’s Funeral,” Equivocator, July 8, 2009, http://uranowski.blogspot.com/2009/07/prime-minister-stephen-harper.html. . For a more detailed overview, see Chapter 1 in this book, and Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).



n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 – 5

. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae Partis, Question 99.3. Translation is based on Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Secunda Secundae, ed. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2007). . On this, see Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). . Legal manuals available in Europe at the time were precise in their definition of sacrilegium, theft of sacred objects. See, for example, the popular manual by Jodocus Damhouder, Praxis rerum criminalium, first published in Antwerp in 1554 and then republished numerous times across Europe. . There is substantial scholarship in Polish about this complicated process. For a useful overview in English, see, for example: Antoni Mączak, “The Structure of Power in the Commonwealth of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1864, ed. J. K. Fedorowicz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Andrzej Wyczański, “The Problem of Authority in Sixteenth-Century Poland: An Essay of Reinterpretation,” in A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1864, ed. J. K. Fedorowicz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). See also Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 23–25. . Volumina Legum: Przedruk Zbioru Praw Staraniem XX. Pijarów w Warszawie Od Roku 1732 Do Roku 1782 Wydanego, 2nd ed., 10 vols. (Petersburg: Jozafat Ohryzka, 1859; reprint, 1980), vol. I, 261 [530], “Ne spirituales judiciis saecularibus se immisceant.” . Volumina Legum, vol. I, 283 [578–579]. . Volumina Legum, vol. I, 283 [578]. . Volumina Legum, vol. I, 283 [578] . Łabędzka-Topolska, “Wzrost Wpływów Reformacji,” 497, in Dzieje Poznania, edited by Jerzy Topolski, Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988. . Tadeusz Lubomirski, ed., Dzienniki Sejmów Walnych Koronnych Za Panowania Zygmunta Augusta, Króla Polskiego, W.X. Litewskiego, 1555 i 1558 R. w Piotrkowie Złożonych (Cracow: W Drukarni Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego,1869), 17. . Lubomirski, ed. Dzienniki, 18. . Lubomirski, ed. Dzienniki, 19. . Henryk Damian Wojtyska, ed., Aloisius Lippomano (1555–1557), vol. 3/1, Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae (Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum Romae, 1993), 5. . Lubomirski, ed., Dzienniki, 20. . Lubomirski, ed. Dzienniki Sejmów 1555 i 1558 Lubomirski, ed. Dzienniki, 21. . Lubomirski, ed. Dzienniki Sejmów 1555 i 1558, 21. . Wojtyska, ed., Aloisius Lippomano (1555–1557), 120, no. 168. Lubomirski, ed., Dzienniki, 21.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 – 7



. Stanisław Grodziski, Z Dziejów Staropolskiej Kultury Prawnej (Cracow: “Universitas,” 2004), 184. On this, see also, e.g., Teter, Jews and Heretics, 25–28; Anna Sucheni-Grabowska, Spory Krolów ze Szlachtą w Złotym Wieku Wokół Egzekucji Praw, ed. Feliks Kiryk and Henryk Szydłowski, Dzieje Narodu i Państwa Polskiego (Cracow: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1988), especially 22, 39; Zdzisław Kaczmarczyk and Bogusław Leśniodorski, Historia Państwa i Prawa Polski, ed. Juliusz Bardach, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Warsaw: PWN, 1968), vol. II, 80–82. . Volumina Legum, vol. II, 21 [625], no. 668. On the 1433 privilege, see Marek Borucki, Temida Staropolska: Szkice z Dziejów Sądownictwa Polski Szlacheckiej (Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1979), 73. . Volumina Legum, vol. II, 52 [692]. . Piotr Skarga, Kazania Sejmowe, Biblioteka Narodowa (Cracow: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1972), 167. Also cited in Borucki, Temida Staropolska, 77. . Skarga, Kazania Sejmowe, 168. . For a discussion of earlier authority of the Church courts, see Grodziski, Z Dziejów Staropolskiej Kultury Prawnej, 116–123. On tithes, see the constitution of 1580, Volumina Legum, vol. II, 210 [1019], “O dziesięcinach.” See the case of Samuel Bolestraszycki, tried in the land court and then Episcopal court in Przemyśl in 1627, regarding the publication of a book deemed heretical by the bishop. Convicted in the Episcopal court and sentenced to infamy, Bolestraszycki appealed to the Crown Tribunal, which sentenced him to a fine and six months in prison and condemned the book, which was subsequently publicly burned on the Lublin market square. Bolestraszycki’s case resulted in a statute in the 1627 constitution that prohibited the tribunal from trying cases not within its competency. Bolestraszycki was rehabilitated in 1649 by the Sejm; the act of rehabilitation is published in Volumina Legum, vol. IV, 124 [272], “Restytucya Urodzonego Samuela Bolestraszyckiego.” On the case, see Grodziski, Z Dziejów Staropolskiej Kultury Prawnej, 199. Elsewhere in Europe, similar secularization of persecution has been noted in cases of witchcraft; see, e.g., Brian P. Levack, “State-Building and Witch Hunting in Early Modern Europe,” in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 96–115. . Grodziski, Z Dziejów Staropolskiej Kultury Prawnej, 195. . On adultery, see Bartłomiej Groicki, Porządek Sądow i Spraw Miejskich Prawa Majdeburskiego w Koronie Polskiej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Prawnicze, 1953 [1559]), 205–208. On bigamy, see Bartłomiej Groicki, Ten Postępek Wybran Iest z Praw Cesarskich Który Karolus V Cesarz Wydał po Wszystkich Swoich Panstwiech, Ktorym Się Nauka Daie, Iako w Tych Sądziech a Sprawach Około Karania na Gardle Abo na Zdrowiu Sędziowie y Każdy Rząd Ma Sie Zachować y Postępować Wedle Boiaźni Bożey Sprawiedliwie, Pobożnie, Roztropnie y Nieskwapliwie (Cracow, 1559 reprint, 1954), 154. On homosexuality, see Groicki, Ten Postępek, 152–153. On infanticide, see Groicki, Ten Postępek, 112–113, 157–159. On blasphemy, see Groicki, Ten Postępek, 149.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 – 1 0

Th is process of criminalizing such crimes is also known in other parts of Europe. On criminalization of infanticide, see the impressive Adriano Prosperi, Dare L’anima: Storia Di Un Infanticidio, Einaudi Storia (Torino: G. Einaudi, 2005). . Groicki, Porządek Sądow, 199–200. . See, for example, Acta Episcopalia in the Archiwum Kurii Metropolitalnej in Cracow, as well as Acta Capituli Plocensis, Acta Episcopalia, and Acta Officialia for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Archiwum Diecezjalne in Płock. . Chrzanowski, ed. Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja, 24.

Chapter 1: The Meaning of the Sacred . Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae Partis, Question 99.3 Translation is based on Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Secunda Secundae, ed. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2007). . Joan Branham, “Penetrating the Sacred: Breaches and Barriers in the Jerusalem Temple,” in Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, ed. Sharon E. J. Gerstel (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, distributed by Harvard University Press, 2006). . Joan R. Branham, “Sacred Space under Erasure in Ancient Synagogues and Early Churches,” Art Bulletin 74, no. 3 (1992): 375–394. For the references to mikdash me’at, see Israel Ta-Shma, “ ‘Mikdash Me’at’—Ha-semel ve-ha-mamshut,” in Kneset Ezra: Sifrut ve-hayyim beveit kneset (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, 1995), 351–364. I thank Evyatar Marienberg for this reference. . Israel Yuval has argued that Christianity and Judaism have defined their rituals in relation or opposition to each other: Israel Jacob Yuval, Shene Goyim BeVitnekh: Yehudim Ve-Notsrim Dimuyim Hadadiyim (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2000); Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). . For a summary of questions concerning consecration of churches, as well as their desecrations and violations, see John Tehophilus Gulczynski, The Desecration and Violation of Churches: An Historical Synopsis and Commentary (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1942). . On the Jewish community understanding itself to be sacred, see Kenneth R. Stow, “Holy Body, Holy Society: Conflicting Medieval Structural Objections,” in Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (New York: New York University Press, 1998). . 1 Cor. 11:22. . See, for example, Gulczynski, Desecration and Violation of Churches, 4.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 – 1 3



. See, for example, Mark 1:39; Luke 4:15; Acts 17:1, 17:10. . See, for example, the medieval representations of the church and the synagogue (the ecclesia and the synagoga respectively) in sculpture and iconography. The most famous examples are the sculptures on the cathedral in Strasbourg and on the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Sometimes, as in St. Mary’s in Prestbury, United Kingdom, the two are represented as trees—the ecclesia as a beautiful blooming one, and the synagoga as a dead one. See http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?item=1156 and also the stained glass in the Elisabeth Church in Marburg, Germany, at http://www .fl holocaust museum .org/ history_wing/antisemitism/arts/ecclesia _synagoga .cfm, both accessed August 15, 2008. . Rev. 2:9 and 3:9. On the historical context of this text, see David Frankfurter, “Jews or Not? Reconstructing the ‘Other’ in Rev. 2:9 and 3:9,” Harvard Theological Review 94, no. 4 (2001): 403–425; Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), chap. 2. . John Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1979). . Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians, 11–12. An online version is available at the Medieval Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/ chrysostom-jews6.html. . On gentiles believing in the power of the Jewish God in antiquity, see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 58. . Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians, Sermon I:5, 18–19. . Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians, Sermon I:6, 21–23. . Mishnah, Megillah 3.1. . Shulhan ‘Arukh (SA), Orah Hayyim (OH) 154.6 especially the commentary by Moses Isserles. See Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians, Sermon I:5. . Rachel Greenblatt, “The Zaks Parokhet from Prague (1602): Sacred Object, Local Liturgy, and Familial Memory,” Early Modern Workshop, 2007, video accessible at http://www.earlymodern.org/citation.php?citKey = 70&docKey =p. . In Przemyśl, for example, court records frequently referred to Eastern Orthodox churches as synagoga ruthenica; see AmPrz 507, Archiwum Państwowe in Przemyśl, 94, 132 Jesuit reports often refer to Protestant churches as synagoga Lutherana or synagoga Calvinistica; see, e.g., Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI), Pol. 51 I, 250v. Also, Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 107–113. . Fortunat Łosiewski, Powtórna Męka Chrystusa w Naywiętszym Sakramencie (Warsaw: n.p. 1726), 60– 61. Cited in Teter, Jews and Heretics, 77– 78.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 – 1 6

. Cited in Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries: Programs of the Byzantine Sanctuary (Seattle: College Art Association, in association with University of Washington Press, 1999), 5. . Quoted in Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West (Washington, DC: Dubmarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006), 2; and Gerstel, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries, 5. . Gerstel, Thresholds of the Sacred, 2. . On the different types of marking the space, see essays in Gerstel, Thresholds of the Sacred. . Jaqueline E. Jung, “Seeing through Screens: The Gothic Choir Enclosure as Frame,” in Gerstel, Thresholds of the Sacred, 186, 188. See also James W. McKinnon, “Representations of the Mass in Medieval and Renaissance Art,” Journal of American Musicological Society 31, no. 1 (1978): 28. On the screens in Byzantine churches, see Gerstel, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries, chap. 1. . Gerstel, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries, 5. . For a very useful overview, see Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially chap. 1. See also Sarah Hamilton and Andrew Spicer, “Defining the Holy: The Delineation of Sacred Space,” in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sarah Hamilton and Andrew Spicer (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 15. . Fourth Lateran Council, Canon 1, in Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed and Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), vol. 1, 229–230. . A white cloth on which the eucharistic vessels are placed on the altar. . Canon 19, in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 244. . Dep. Testium XV, Archiwum Archidiecezjalne in Poznań, 117r–119v. . Dep. Testium XV, 61r– 62r. . Homicide, bloodshed, or a burial of an “infidel” may render a church defiled, c. iv, x, De consecratione ecclesiae, X, III xi; Emil Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici. Editio lipsiensis secunda (Graz: Akeadmische Druck-U. Verlagsanstalt, 1959), vol. II, 634– 635. . Nathan Mitchell, Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist outside Mass (Studies in the Reformed Rites of the Catholic Church) (New York: Pueblo, 1982), chap. 3. . Christa C. Mayer-Thurman, Raiment for the Lord’s Service: A Thousand Years of Western Vestments (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1975), 27. . For examples of these textiles, see Mayer-Thurman, Raiment for the Lord’s Service. The antependia and altar cloths varied during the liturgical year: white was used for Christmas, Easter, and any other festivals associated with Jesus himself, Mary, and certain saints. Red was the color of Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Pentecost,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 – 2 0



and festivals of the apostles and martyred saints; violet or purple was displayed during Lent and Advent; black at funerals; and green on an ordinary day. For a discussion of liturgical objects within a church, see Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, chap. 1. Consecration is irreversible and performed only once, with the use of the holy oils; blessing can be repeated and is performed with the holy water. . Mayer-Thurman, Raiment for the Lord’s Service, 13. . Bernard Maciejowski, “Epistola Pastoralis Ad Parochos Provinciae Gnesnensis, 1607,” in Synodus Provincialis, Gnesnensis Provinciae Sub Illustrissimo Et Reverendissimo Domino D. Joanne Wężyk . . . Petricoviae Anno Dni Millesimo Sexcentesimo Vigesimo Octavo, Die Vigesima Secunda Mensis Maii Celebrata (Cracow: In Officina Andreae Petricovii SRM Typographii, 1629). . Ibid., C2v. . Ibid., C3r–ff. . Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman Period (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997). . See, for example, Beit Yosef, OH 153.9 and SA, OH 153.9. . Baruch M. Bokser, “Approaching Sacred Space,” Harvard Theological Review 78, no. 3/4 (1985): 288–289. . Quoted in Branham, “Sacred Space under Erasure,” 387, 389 on Hamman Lif. . Yuval, Shene Goyim Be-Vitnekh, 47–48; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 33. . Genesis Rabba (63:6). I thank Gwynn Kessler for bringing this passage to my attention. . David Berger, The Jewish- Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus, vol. 4, Judaica, Texts and Translations (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), sections 210 and 219, English 206, 213; Hebrew 144; 149. . Berger, Nizzahon Vetus, section 240, English 225; Hebrew 159. . Berger, Nizzahon Vetus, section 231, English 219; Hebrew 155. . Simon Dubnow, ed., Pinkas Ha-Medinah: O Pinkas Va’ad Ha-Kehilot HaRashiyot Bi-Medinat Lita, Kovets Takkanot U-Fesakim Mi- Shenat 383 ’Ad Shenat 521 (Berlin: ’Ayanot, 1925), takkanot 9, 440, 684, 725, 768. . Joel Sirkes, Beit Hadash on Tur 151.10. . Yuval, Shene Goyim Be-Vitnekh, 217; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 203. . Mishnah, Megillah 3.2. . Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Tefillah 1. I thank Vivian Mann of the Jewish Museum and Jewish Theological Seminary for referring me to this source. . Joshua Falk, Penei Yehoshu’a, OH, no. 7. I thank Vivian Mann for referring me to this source. . Taz Magen Avraham on SA, OH 151.12 (2). . Ibid. For a discussion of the different levels of sacredness of a synagogue versus a house of study, see, for example, Tur, Beit Yosef, YD 246.7, 246.17, and SA YD (Yoreh Deah) 246.17 with commentaries; see also SA, OH 151.2.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 – 2 1

. Magen Avraham on SA, OH 151.1. . SA, OH 151.1. . Magen Avraham on SA, OH 151.1.2. . SA, OH 151.9. . SA, OH 85.2. . On the synagogue as a sacred space and questions concerning menstruation, see Evyatar Marienberg, “Menstruation in Sacred Places: Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Women in the Synagogue,” Nordisk Judaistik 25, no. 1 (2004): 215–244; Evyatar Marienberg, Niddah: Lorsque Les Juifs Conceptualisent La Menstruation (Paris: Belles lettres, 2003). See also Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 78; Avraham Grossman, Hasidot U-Moredot: Nashim Yehudiyot Be-Eiropah Be-Yamei Ha-Beinayim (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2003), 319; Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004), 184. For Poland, see Edward Fram, My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2007), 70–71. . In the case of women’s sections, it was still men who purchased and owned such seats; Fram, My Dear Daughter, 64. . SA, OH 140.5, Turei Zahav on Moses Isserles’s gloss there. . Dubnow, Pinkas Ha-Medinah, takkanah 173. . Akty Izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Kommisieiu Dla Razbora Drevnikh Aktov, vol. 5 (Vilna: 1871), 303. . Ibid., 240–241. . Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Ms. BJ 145 III, “Protocolorum advocatiale oppidi Racoviae a 1633–1659,” 47v–48r. A similar case, though one not of debts, occurred in 1676 in the Luck Diocese, where an Orthodox church’s keys were confiscated by a local judge and the case subsequently appealed to the Royal Tribunal in Lublin. The local Orthodox priest nonetheless continued to perform religious ser vices there, but the judge, apparently a Catholic, called out, “Who permitted you to perform these cursed ser vices . . . in Ruthenian. . . . Go with your Christs to Istanbul, that is where it is proper for you to perform your worship, and here it is not proper so that you will not spread anymore.” When the Eastern Orthodox clerics sought help from local Carmelites to restrain the judge, to their chagrin, the Carmelites sided with the judge. The Eastern Orthodox clerics filed a complaint that the Carmelites now were encroaching on their land and monastery. See TK 17, “Pozwy za Jana III Sobieskiego 1674–1689,” 130–156, quote on 146. . For a more complete discussion of this, see Magda Teter, “ ‘There Should be No Love between Us and Them’: Social Life and Bounds of Jewish and Canon Law

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

in Early Modern Poland,” in Early Modern Poland: Borders and Boundaries, ed. Adam Teller and Magda Teter, Polin 22 (Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010). . Dubnow, Pinkas Ha-Medinah, 193–194, takkanah 773. See also responsa Havot Yair, nos. 66 and 73, presented at the Early Modern Workshop in August 2006 and available online: Debra Kaplan, “Jewish Women and Economic Encounters with Christians,” at http://www.earlymodern.org/citation.php?citKey =34&docKey =p accessed January 26, 2007. See also an ordinance by the Jewish community of the town of Mir in 1751, “The Meeting of the Holy Council [of the Lithuanian Land] at Mir, November–December 1751” [Va’ad kodesh be-kehilat ha-kodesh Mir be-hodesh Heshvan try], translated by Adam Teller, University of Haifa at http://www.earlymodern.org/ citation.php?citKey =32&docKey = e, accessed January 26, 2007. . See, for example, the SA, YD 151.9–10 and commentaries. See Chapter 7 in this book on real cases of accusations against Jews for removing Christian images from houses rented from Christians. . Similar restrictions would be embraced later by church leaders, but for drastically different reasons. Church leaders were concerned with “noise pollution.” They argued that the proximity of Jewish synagogues to Christian churches resulted in the disruption of church ser vices. . SA, YD 143.1 and Turei Zahav there. My thanks go to Evyatar Marienberg for discussing this ruling with me. . Akty Izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Kommisieiu Dla Razbora Drevnikh Aktov: Akty O Evreiakh, vol. 28 (Vilna: 1901), 380–381, no. 308. The Jesuit priest’s name was Jan Trlęski. . On the prohibition to build “houses of idol worship,” see, for example, SA, YD 143.2. . Akty Izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Kommisieiu Dla Razbora Drevnikh Aktov, vol. 29 (Vilna: 1902), 356–359. See also in both the original language and in English, “Decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal against the Kahal of Minsk, Court Records, 1711,” prepared by Magda Teter, http://www.earlymodern.org/citation.php?citKey = 64& docKey = o, accessed June 3, 2008. . “Decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal,” trans. Magda Teter. . See Turei Zahav on SA, OH 224.2. See also Benjamin Slonik, Masa’at Binyamin, no. 86; the medieval rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan, ’Avodah Zarah, 289, Bar Ilan Responsa Project 16+. See also Kidush Ha-Shem Shel Reb Matis Ve-Reb Pinhas Ve-Reb Abraham Zekhutam Ya’amod Lanu Bi-Medinat Polin (n.p: n.p., n.d.), unnumbered, second page of the text. On the dating of this rare print, see below, chap. 3. On this case, see Teter, Jews and Heretics, 31. Such play on language and vocalization was very common; see Elisheva Carlebach’s forthcoming book from Harvard University Press. . Benjamin Slonik, Masa’at Binyamin, no. 86. The Bar-Ilan responsa project has “Ishmaelim,” or Muslims, as those asking Jews for clothes. Th is is because the

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project used a later version that was censored. In the original version of the responsum, the word is ’akum, or “idolators,” and clearly refers to Christians. . SA, YD 142.11 and commentaries; and SA, YD 142.15. . Dubnow, Pinkas Ha-Medinah, takkanah 725 from 1676. The terminology of tum’ah is interesting here, for halakhically there are five types of impurity: the impurity imparted by the dead, by seminal discharge, by menstrual blood, by postpartum blood, and by idolatry. Tum’ah is something abominable to be avoided. Here, there appears to be an attempt to define boundaries and it seems it is a reference to idolatry, as tum’ah. However, given that one of the meanings of tum’ah is pollution from dead bodies, this might also be a tacit polemic against Christianity, if referred to vessels used during the Eucharist, by connecting the ritual objects to “the dead corpse,” as Jesus was sometimes referred to in rabbinic sources, or simply because churches were seen as impure for the presence of dead bodies—buried there or, as with relics of saints, worshipped there. See the discussion of Sefer Nizzahon Yashan and its treatment of the churches and the Eucharist earlier in this chapter. For references to Jesus as a “stinking corpse,” or “rotting corpse,” see Abraham Meir Habermann, ed., Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz Ve-Tsarfat: Divre Zikhronot Mi-Bene Ha-Dorot Shebi-Tekufat Mas’e Ha-Tselav U-Mivhar Piyutehem (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1945), 34, 43. On the cross as ti’uv, “an abomination,” see Elliott S. Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), chap. 6. . SA, YD 139.9, 11–12, 14–15. . David Ha-Levi, in his commentary, Turei Zahav, on SA, OH 154.11. . SA, YD 139.13. . Gloss on SA, YD 139.13. On the question of candles, see also the thirteenthcentury Derashot ha-Maharah Or Zaru’a, no. 11. . See Chapter 2 in this book for details. On medieval pawnbroking, see Hayim Soloveitchik, “Pawnbroking: A Study In ‘Ribbit’ and of the Halakah in Exile,” Proceedings of American Academy for Jewish Research 38–39 (1970–1971). . In Jewish folktales, there is a story about Rashi’s father, who had a precious pearl that Christians wanted to use as an adornment in a church. Rashi’s father decided to drop the pearl in the river and lose the revenue rather than contribute to idolatry; Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, trans. Jacqueline S. Teitelbaum, Folklore Studies in Translation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 326. I thank my colleague and friend, Edward Fram, for referring me to this book. . SA, YD 151.1. . SA, YD 139.11, and Isserles’s gloss prohibiting it if used for “idolatrous” worship. . Akta m. Lublina 208, Acta Consularia, 218v. . Akta m. Lublina 208, Acta Consularia, 219.

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. Tur, YD 146; especially SA, YD 146.5, with the commentaries of Moses Isserles. On the acts of desecration of objects, especially the cross, see Horowitz, Reckless Rites, chap. 6. . See, for example, SA, YD 139.12; SA, YD 146. . Mishnah, AZ 4:5, also BT AZ 53a, and Tur and SA, YD 146. They still hold importance today. See, for example, a response to a question whether one can enjoy images that had been used for religious worship but today are displayed in a museum, http://www.yeshiva.org.il/ask/eng/?id=448, accessed June 18, 2008. . SA, YD 139.12. Damaged “idols” also lost their value and Jews were able to profit from them, SA, YD 146.11. This question of whether a pledge constitutes a bitul is first raised in the Mishnah, AZ 4:5, in which two opinions are given— one for it and one against it. It is further discussed in the Babylonian Talmud, BT AZ 53a–b. See also a discussion of whether the bitul is necessary for objects used by Christians, including a “chalice in which they carry abominable bread” and clothes used by priests, in Derashot ha-Maharah, Or Zaru’a, no. 11. . BT AZ 53a–b and Turei Zahav on SA, YD 146.8. . BT AZ 53a–b. . Matt. 26:26–28. . Luke 22:19–20. See also 1 Cor. 10:15–17 and 11:23–30. I thank Evyatar Marienberg for suggesting these passages. For a fuller discussion, see Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation. . Quoted in Gregoria Frank, “ ‘Taste and See’: The Eucharist and the Eyes of the Faith in the Fourth Century,” Church History 70, no. 4 (2001): 619– 620. . Ibid., 628. . Quoted in Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 38. . On the different dating of Easter, see Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 72. . For a useful overview of the development of eucharistic worship, see Mitchell, Cult and Controversy; on Theodulph, see chap. 3. See also Benedict XIV, De Sacrificia Missae, I, section 36; and “Altar bread” in The Catholic Encyclopedia. . Quoted in Rubin, Corpus Christi, 42. . Canon 20, in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 244. . Bernard Hamilton, “The Albigesian Crusade and Heresy,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume V, c. 1198–1300, ed. David Abulafia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). . Bernard Gui, Inquisitor’s Manual, cited in Roberta Anderson and Dominic Aidan Bellenger, Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2003), 180. . For a discussion of the patristic period, see, for example, most recently, David Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians, S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies (Berkeley: University of California

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Press, 2007). The late medieval period is discussed extensively in Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). See also Gavin I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), chap. 9. . Rubin, Corpus Christi; Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). See also Édouard Dumoutet, Le Désir de voir l’Hostie et les origines de la dévotio au Saint Sacrement (Paris: Beauchesne, 1926); I thank Evyatar Marienberg for this reference. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood. . Ibid., chap. 2, especially 25–29. . Jan Hus, De Sanguine Christi, ed. Wenzel Flajšhans, vol. 1, fasc. 3, Opera Omnia (Prague: Verlag von Jos. R. Vilimek, 1903. See also, Bynum, Wonderful Blood, chap. 2, especially 36–43. . Hus draws a parallel between Jesus’s warning in Matt. 24:23–24; Hus, De Sanguine Christi, 30–31 [XIII]. . Hus, De Sanguine Christi, 28–29 [XI–XII]. . On the various debates and voices within the Church, see most recently, Bynum, Wonderful Blood. . Jan Hus mentioned Cracow in his De Sanguine Christi. See, e.g., Hus, De Sanguine Christi, 26–27 [X:35], 32 [XIV:45]. Before the wider acceptance of the cult in the fifteenth century, there is evidence of a eucharistic cult in Poland only in major cities; besides Cracow, churches of Corpus Christi were also founded in Kazimierz (1340), Wilno (1397), and Poznań (1406). Influenced by the post–World War II geography of Poland, some scholars also cite Wrocław in 1318. . Mikołaj Trąba, Statuty Synodalne Wieluńsko-Kaliskie Mikołaja Trąby z R. 1420, ed. Jan Fijałek and Adam Vetulani (Cracow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1951), 38– 39, “De feriis.” On development of the Corpus Christi festival, see Rubin, Corpus Christi. On the cult of blood, see most recently, Biale, Blood and Belief; Bynum, Wonderful Blood. . Trąba, Statuty Synodalne Wielusko-Kaliskie, 7– 9, “De summa Trinitate.” . Ibid., 9. . For the 1424 decree, see Volumina Legum: Przedruk Zbioru Praw Staraniem XX. Pijarów w Warszawie Od Roku 1732 Do Roku 1782 Wydanego, 2nd ed., 10 vols. (Petersburg: Jozafat Ohryzka, 1859; reprint, 1980), vol. 1, 38, par. 86, “Contra Hereticos et Fautores Eorum.” . Ibid., 223 [par. 448–449]. . Ibid., 279 [par. 569–570]. . Rubin, Gentile Tales. . Mitchell, Cult and Controversy, 78– 79. . Quoted in Mitchell, Cult and Controversy, 78– 79. This story appears to be an inverted story of the binding of Isaac, where the angel rescues Isaac and points to a

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sacrificial lamb instead. Here, the angel slaughters the child. In Christian theology, the binding of Isaac has been viewed as a prefiguration of Christ; see Augustine, City of God (London: Penguin Classics), Book XVI, chap. 32. . Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century: A Study of Their Relations during the Years 1198–1254 (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1933), English 137, 139; Latin 136, 138. . On the dissemination of this tale, see Rubin, Gentile Tales. . Quoted in Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, “The Altar of Corpus Domini in Urbino: Paolo Uccello, Joos Van Ghent, Piero Della Francesca,” Art Bulletin 49, no. 1 (1967): 3. For a discussion of the case, see Rubin, Gentile Tales, 40–48. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 80. . Christopher Elwood, The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 2, especially page 28. . Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 3–4. . Maciej Rosentreter, the author of Compendium to iest krotkie ogarnienie przednieyszych Capia naukiey prawdziwego Kościoła Ewangelickiego y fałszywych a martwych ustaw Kościoła papieskiego wiernym Panskim zebrane y spisane (Królewiec: Jerzy Neyden, 1606), described himself as a “servant of the Church of Christ,” and his book was a compendium of precepts of “the true evangelical church” against “the false and dead” teachings of the “papist church.” On the recent studies of sacred space in post-Reformation Europe complicating the dominant narrative of Protestant iconoclasm and a sharp divide between Catholics and Protestants, see Coster and Spicer, Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe. For an example of this in Poland, see Maria Sipayllo, ed., Acta Synodalia Ecclesiarum Poloniae Reformatarum, 1560–1570, vol. 2, Akta Synodów Różnowierczych w Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego,1972), 7. . Martin Luther, Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, 50 vols. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House; Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenberg Press, 1955), vol. 40/II, 129–130. . Luther, Works, vol. 37, 371. Also quoted in Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, 105. . “Admonition concerning the Sacrament” (1530), Luther, Works, vol. 38, 107–108. . Ibid., 108, 110. . “The Private Mass and the Consecration of Priests” (1533), Luther, Works, vol. 38, 177. In this particular treatise, Luther raged against the practice of private Masses. . Luther, Works, vol. 40, 133–134. . Luther, Works, vol. 40, 289. See also “The Private Mass and the Consecration of Priests” (1533), Luther, Works, vol. 38, 199–200.

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. “Brief Confession concerning the Holy Sacrament” (1544), Luther, Works, vol. 38, 288. . Luther, Works, vol. 38, 292. See also his more elaborate and lengthier “Confession concerning Christ’s Supper” (1528), Luther, Works, vol. 37, 161–372. . See especially Elwood, The Body Broken. On host desecration and ritual murder accusations against Jews as a means to protect the purity of the “corpus Christianitatis,” “the body of Christian polity,” see Kenneth R. Stow, Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters: Continuity in the Catholic-Jewish Encounter, Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). . Jean Calvin, “Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” in Tracts and Treatises on the Doctrine and Worship of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958), especially sections 39, 43, 56–58. Calvin and his eucharistic views, see Elwood, The Body Broken, chap. 3. . Calvin, “Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” sections 12 and 14. . John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), Book IV, chap. 17, section 1. . Ibid. . Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, chap. 17, section 43, quoted in Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, 164. . Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, 167. . Maria Sipayllo, ed., Acta Synodalia Ecclesiarum Poloniae Reformatarum, 1550– 1559, vol. 1, Akta Synodów Różnowierczych w Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1966), 288–229. . Ibid., 289. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, chap. 17, section 43. . Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1560–1570, 293–294. . Maria Sipayllo, ed., Acta Synodalia Ecclesiarum Poloniae Reformatarum, 1569– 1632, vol. 4, Akta Synodów Różnowierczych w Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1997), 68. . The council was held in Bełżyce in 1613. Maria Sipayllo, ed., Acta Synodalia Ecclesiarum Poloniae Reformatarum, 1571–1632, vol. 3, Akta Synodów Różnowierczych w Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1983), 347. . Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1550–1559, 289, 292; Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1560– 1570, 103, 272. . Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1550–1559, 111–113. . Colloquium in Bużenna, June 16, 1561, Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1560–1570, 101. . Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1560–1570, 293. . Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1571–1632, 7. . Ibid., 220, document 266. . Ibid., 336, document 136. . The colloquium was held in Bużenna; Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1560–1570, 103, 107.

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. This council convened in Ożarów in 1598, Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1571–1632, 197–198. . Wojciech Węgierski, Antidotum Abo Lekarstwo Duszne Przeciwko Apostasiey, y Odstapieniu Od Prawdy, na Iedynym Fundamencie Ss. Prorokow y Apostolow Ugruntowaney (Baranow: Gerzy [sic] Twardomeski, 1646), 66– 67. . Ibid., 98. . Krzysztof Kraiński, Postylla Kościoła Powszechnego Apostolskiego Słowem Boym Ugruntowana na Jezusie Chrystusie. Spisana Ku Chwale Bogy w Troycy S. Iedynemu Przez Księdza Krzysztofa Kraińskiego (n.p., after 1611), 528v, 530. . Ibid., 531v. The whole discussion of the ornaments within churches is on pages 531v–536. . Ibid., 532. . Ibid., 533. . Ibid., 534–534v. See also Maciej Rosentreter, Compendium to Iest Krotkie Ogarnienie Przednieyszych Capita Naukiey Prawdziwego Kościoła Ewangelickiego, y Fałszywych a Martwych Ustaw Kościoła Papieskiego, Wiernym Paskim Zebrane y Spisane (Królewiec: Jerzy Naycken, 1606). . Kraiński, Postylla Kościoła, 535. Kraiński’s critique of chalices made of expensive materials and his reference to early Christians using wooden cups may stem from a saying attributed to an eighth-century saint, St. Boniface, that “in the early ages of the Church the priests were of gold and the chalices of wood, but that now the chalices were of gold and the priests of wood,” Catholic Encyclopedia, “Chalice.” . Kraiński, Postylla Kościoła, 537–538. . Ibid., 726. . Ibid. . Ibid., 538. . See, e.g., Sipayllo, Acta Synodalia, 1560–1570, 98, 101.

Chapter 2: Stealing Sacred Objects . Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae Partis (henceforth, II-II), Question 99.3. Translation is based on Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Secunda Secundae, ed. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2007). . Ibid. . Ibid., II-II. 99.4. . Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), e.g., 8. . Bartłomiej Groicki, Ten Postępek Wybran Iest z Praw Cesarskich Który Karolus V Cesarz Wydać Po Wszystkich Swoich Pastwiech, Ktorym Się Nauka Daie, Iako w Tych Sądziech a Sprawach Około Karania na Gardle Abo na Zdrowiu Sędziowie y Każdy Rząd Ma Sie Zachować y Postępować Wedle Boiaźni Bożey Sprawiedliwie, Pobożnie,



n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 1 – 4 4

Roztropnie y Nieskwapliwie (Cracow, 1559 reprint, 1954), Articles 65–82. For an example of how the courts struggled to justify more lenient penalties, see Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Ms. 86, III, “Liber maleficorum seu Acta judicii necessarii banniti Miechoviensis abanno 1571–1747,” last three cases from 1735 and 1747, 93r– 98v. . In 1580, Akta miasta Krakowa in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (ul. Sienna) (hereafter, AmKr) 864, 222–224. See also the case of Walerian of Lwów, charged in Cracow in 1613, AmKr 864, 362–364. . In 1592, Akta miasta Poznania in Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań (hereafter, AmPoz), I 640, 44r–45r. See also the case of Albertus in 1597 in Poznań, who stole “a tin in which was the holy sacrament,” AmPoz I 640, 174v–176v. . For an exception, see the case of Jan Chrzanowski, tried in Lublin in 1627 for robbing numerous churches of their antependia, tablecloths, and precious stones and corals, and was burned at the stake, but he did not steal ritual objects related to the Eucharistic worship; Akta miasta Lublina in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin (hereafter, AmL) 141, 85– 95. . AmKr 864, 93– 95. . Ibid., 95: “sąd boży.” . AmPoz I 639, Liber Maleficorum (1554–1587), Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań, 121r–v. . In 1596, AmPoz I 640, Liber Maleficorum (1588–1600), 129v–130r. . AmPoz I 640, 167r–168r and 170r–v. See also the case of Bartholomeus Tyncel, accused of robbing a church in 1629 in Poznan, AmPoz I 400, Acta iudicii criminalis (1627–1629), 1047, 1051–1052; and the case of Konarski, who robbed a church in Wieliczka in 1661 and was caught bringing the stolen church objects into Cracow by the toll officer, Castrensia Cracoviensia in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Wawel) (hereafter, CC) 480, 98–100. . Akta miasta Kazimierza in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (ul. Sienna) (hereafter, AmKaz) K 267, 222–243; AmKaz K 268, 1–10. For a full list of Anna’s loot over the years, see AmKaz K 268, 7–10 and K 267, 232–242. . Ibid., K 267, 226. . Ibid., K 267, 224, 237; K 268, 1–10. . Ibid., K 267, 230. . Ibid., K 268, 5. . AmL 142, 30. See also AmL 143, 516–530, especially 522. For another example of criminal activity expressed in the language of guild and apprenticeship, see Wacław Uruszczak and Irena Dwornicka, eds., Acta Maleficorum Wisniciae: Księga Złoczyńców Sądu Kryminalnego w Wiśniczu (1629–1665) (Cracow: Collegium Columbinum, 2003), 71. . In 1638, AmL 141, 439v–442r. . AmL 142, 82–85. . AmL 142, 82–85. See also AmL 141, 439v–442r.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 4 – 4 9



. AmL 142, 131r–134v. . Ibid., 133v–134v. . In 1592, AmPoz I 640, 44r–45r. . In 1691 in Wiśnicz, near Cracow, another man, Joannes Peplenski, accused of stealing a pyx from a church, said that he had intended to rob the church but “had been frightened” to enter it. Although he “overcame” his fear and robbed the church, he took pains to insist that the pyx contained no hosts. (The court’s rationale and decision in this case are not available, only a note that the verdict was implemented by the court in Nowy Sącz survived.) IT 2059, Wiśnicz, 36–38, quote from IT 2059, 37. . CC 1102, 78–81. . Ibid., 80. . AmKr 869, 5b–15. . Ibid., 15. . In 1664, Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 278–285. They stole from the small town of Bardejów (now in Slovakia), and from a church in Złotna. . Ibid., 281. . Ibid., 282. . Ibid., 283. . Ibid., 284. . Akta Staropolskie Bochni (hereafter, ASB) 69, “Acta Judiciorum Criminalium,” Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Oddział w Bochni), 95–116. For a discussion of the case in Bochnia, see Chapter 6 in this book. . Ibid., 97– 98. . Ibid. . Ibid., 107–108. . Ibid. 99. . Ibid., 100–101. . Ibid., 102, 109–110. . Ibid., 102–105. . Ibid., 104. He offered as evidence an exemplum about Zenobia, the thirdcentury queen of Palmyra, captured by Emperor Aurelian during his conquest of her empire but released by him because, Fortynowicz argued, it was inappropriate to act against a woman— even “animals treat females more lightly than males, as Pliny had shown.” . See, for example, the popular manual by Jodocus Damhouder, Praxis Rerum Criminalium, first published in Antwerp in 1554 and then republished numerous times across Europe. . ASB 69, 104–105. . Ibid., 111–112. . See, e.g., Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 282. See also AmPoz, I 2264 and AmPoz, I 2265.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 9 – 5 5

. On Christian helpers in Jewish homes, see Jacob Katz, Goi Shel Shabat (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1983); in English, see Katz, The “Shabbes Goy”: A Study in Halakhic Flexibility (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1992). . Whether it was true or only a stereotype may not have been relevant if the public accepted the image that Catholic preachers promoted. See Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 122–125, 133. . Oswald Balzer, ed., Regestr Złoczyńców Grodu Sanockiego: 1554–1638, vol. 1, Materiały Historyczne (Lwów: Towarzystwo Historyczne, 1891), 98–100, no. 155. . In 1676, AmL 144, 26r–27v. . See, for example, cases in Wiśnicz and Sanok, Balzer, Regestr Złoczyńców, 107–108, no. 164; Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 66– 70. Also, Archiwum Państwowe in Przemyśl (hereafter, AmPrz) 82, 1–13; AmPrz 79, 71– 73. . Balzer, Regestr Złoczyńców, 107–108, no. 164. . Ibid., 153–156, no. 108. . October 22, 1638, Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 66– 70. . Ibid., 70– 74. . Ibid., 73. . See, for example, AmPrz 85, mf. 160083, 31–33. . AmL 141, 85r– 95r. . Ibid., 86v. . Ibid., 93v. . CC 1102, 45– 63. . Ibid., 45. The Lubomirskis were the owners of the village. . Ibid., 49. . Ibid., 49–50. Romanowski bought some clothes with his earnings. . Ibid., 52. . Ibid., 54–55. . Ibid., 55. . Ibid. . Ibid., 57. . Ibid., 61. . Ibid. . In 1574, AmPoz I 639, 145v–146v. See also the case of Helias Parzygelny in this chapter. . Ibid., 146r. . Ibid., 146r-v. On St. Anne’s Day, July 26. . AmL 209, 393r–v. . In 1691, CC 1102, 249–251. See also the case in 1712 in Cracow, AmKr 872 “Prothocolla causarum criminalium officii consularis 1709–1716,” verdict on 282– 283, court record on 265–273.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 1 – 5 8



. Bartholomeus did break his loot into small pieces after the theft of silver from a church in Markuszów, and Mathias Koszydło from Kraśnik did the same. Acta maleficorum 141, AmL, 159r–162r, 439v–442. Many more examples are found in the archives, but would be too long to cite them all here. . CC 1102, 74– 76. . BT (Babylonian Talmud), AZ (Avodah Zarah) 53a–b, see also Chapter 1 in this book. . An English translation is available in Robert Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, Library of Jewish Studies (New York: Behrman House, 1980), 88– 93, the clause is on 89. . Simon Dubnow, ed., Pinkas Ha-Medinah: O Pinkas Va’ad Ha-Kehilot HaRashiyot Bi-Medinat Lita, Kovets Takkanot U-Fesakim Mi- Shenat 383 ’Ad Shenat 521 (Berlin: ’Ayanot, 1925), no. 662. . Ibid., no. 725. . Acta Consularia in Archiwum Archidiecezjalne in Poznań (hereafter, AC) 167 (1659–1665), 223v–224r, 226v, 229v. . The priest was Martin Marlicz; the Jews returned the pledges on May 31, AC 167, 229v. . CC 1102, 81, the complete case is on 78–81. . In 1597, AmPoz I 640, Liber Maleficorum (1588–1600), 174v–176v. . In 1642, AmL 142, 159–162. First, he went to the small town of Bełżyce, about 25 km away from Lublin. After arriving on Friday, he sold some of the loot to a Jew, and kept the rest until the end of the Jewish Sabbath. . Ibid., 160r. . Ibid., 161r. . AmL 140, 172r–179r. The items are listed on 174v. . Ibid., 172v. . Ibid. . Ibid., fol. 175r–v. . Ibid., 173. For examples of other cases, see also AmL 140, fols. 312r-v. In a lengthy case of host desecration (discussed in later chapters) in which Jews denounced a Christian offering them loot, the Christian was burned at the stake, AmL 141, fols. 266– 271. See also fols. 439v–442, the case of a church robber who stole a number of silver items and tried to sell them to Jews, who captured him and had him arrested. The thief was sentenced to death by live burning, but his sentence was commuted to decapitation and burning. Also, AmL 142, fols. 81– 85 and 159v–161v. . AmL 140, fols. 179r-v, 193r-v. . Ibid., 193v. . Ibid., 179v. . AmL 141, 251r–254v.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 8 – 6 1

. Ibid., 251v, 252v. By the 1580s, Protestant schools had all but collapsed in Kalisz, and in 1585, the head of the Kalisz Jesuits reported that the local Protestant school was abandoned and that regional nobles, including Protestants, were sending their sons to the Jesuit academy. Władysław Kocielniak and Krzysztof Walczak, Kronika Miasta Kalisza (Kalisz: Kaliskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, 2002), 45, 46, 50. . AmL 141, 252v . Ibid. . Ibid., 252v–253r. . Ibid., 253r. . Ibid. . Ibid., 252v, 254r. . Ibid., 254v. . CC 1102, 81. See earlier in this chapter for a discussion of this case. . Ibid. . CC 1101, 260–362, 367. . Ibid., 360, 362. . CC 1101, 362, 367. In another case, in 1739 in Przemyśl, a Jewish woman, Sara Berkowa, and a nobleman, “Lord Psarski,” brought charges against a Jew, Schar Jozefowicz, for stealing Berkowa’s merchandise and for raiding Lord Psarski’s estate. Among the stolen items were dresses, furs, and other items, which were then “divided and sold.” During interrogation, Schar confessed not only to taking and selling Berkowa’s merchandise and Lord Psarski’s possessions but also to robbing a number of churches— among them, the parish church in Husakow, the Church of Mary the Virgin in Mościce, and the Church of the Franciscan friars in Przemyśl. The verdict has not been preserved, so it is not known what happened to Schar. See AmPrz 79, 77– 91. . Akty Izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Kommisieiu Dla Razbora Drevnikh Aktov (Vilna: 1902),(henceforth, AIVK ) vol. 29, 244–253, no. 153. For the original and the English translation with an introduction and a video presentation of this text, see Magda Teter, “A Decree by the Tribunal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania concerning a Church Robbery,” Early Modern Workshop 2004, (English) http://www.earlymodern .org/citation.php?citKey =12&docKey =e; (original in Polish) http://www.earlymodern .org/citation.php?citKey =12&docKey = o, both accessed June 15, 2008. . AIVK, vol. 29, 245. . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid., 246. . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid., 248. . Ibid.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 1 – 6 7



. Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid., 249. . Ibid., 251. . Ibid., 252. . In 1719, there was one spectacular case of Jews accused of stealing from a church in Brześć. They broke into a crypt and robbed the tomb of a prominent noblewoman, but they did not steal liturgical objects. See AIVK vol. 29, 409–411, no. 209. For the original and the English translation with an introduction and a video presentation of this text, see Magda Teter, “Material Possessions and Religious Boundaries in Early Modern Poland,” Early Modern Workshop 2007, http:// www.earlymodern.org/citation.php?citKey = 85&docKey =i, accessed June 15, 2008. See also a discussion of this case and its broader context in Teter, Jews and Heretics, 37– 38.

Chapter 3: Prosecuting Sins, Defending Faith . Akta miasta Chełma in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin (hereafter, AmCh) 2, 497r–499r. . There is extensive literature on this topic, especially on Italy and Venice. See, for example, Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, History from Crime (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Guido Ruggiero, “The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini: ‘Male,’ Signs, and the Everyday World of Pre-Modern Medicine,” American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (2001). See also Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). For a discussion of judicial actions against heresy across different European countries, see Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), chap. 3. . Wacław Uruszczak and Irena Dwornicka, eds., Acta Maleficorum Wisniciae: Księga Złoczynców Sądu Kryminalnego w Wiśniczu (1629–1665) (Cracow: Collegium Columbinum, 2003), 98–102. . Ibid., 99. . Ibid., 100. . Ibid., 100–101. . Ibid., 101. . Ibid. . Ibid., 102. . See Chapter 1, section “Blasphemy, Heresy, and ‘The Body and Blood of Christ’. ”



n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 7 – 6 8

. W. David Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk”: Confession and Conscience in CounterReformation Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 33. . On confession in the post-Reformation Catholic Church, see, for example, John Bossy, “The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (1975); Wietse DeBoer, “ ‘Ad Audiendi Non Videndi Commoditatem’: Note sull’introduzione del Confessionale Soprattutto in Italia,” Quaderni Storici 26, no. 2 (1991); Lawrence G. Duggan, “Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984); Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 105–107; Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk”; Paolo Prodi and Carla Penuti, eds., Disciplina dell’anima, Disciplina del Corpo e Disciplina della Societá tra Medioevo ed Etá Moderna (Bologna: Societá editrice il Mulino, 1994). For the texts of the canons issued at the councils in 1215 (canon 21) and at Trent (session 14, chapter 5), see Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), vol. I, 245; vol. II, 707. . Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. I, 245. . Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 34. . Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. II, 707. . Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk.” . Constitutiones Synodorum Matropolitanae Ecclesiae Gnesnensis Provincialium (Cracow: 1761 [1636]), “De Poenitentiis,” 338. See also Synod of Gniezno in 1634. . Bernard Maciejowski, “Epistola Pastoralis Ad Parochos Provinciae Gnesnensis, 1607,” in Synodus Provincialis, Gnesnensis Provinciae Sub Illustrissimo Et Reverendissimo Domino D. Joanne Wężyk . . . Petricoviae Anno Dni Millesimo Sexcentesimo Vigesimo Octavo, Die Vigesima Secunda Mensis Maii Celebrata (Cracow: In Officina Andreae Petricovii SRM Typographii, 1629), C3r. . Acta Polonia in Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI, Rome) (hereafter, Pol.), 51 I, 237r. Criminal records from Poznań are missing for the year 1611. . See Natalie Zemon Davis’s description of early modern confession in a French city, Natalie Zemon Davis, “From ‘Popular Religion’ to Religious Cultures,” in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. Steven E. Ozment (St. Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1982), 333–334. Also cited and discussed in Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 8– 9. Myers also extensively discusses the role of Jesuits in promoting Catholic piety in the post-Reformation era, and their stress on the importance of confession. . Pol. 51 I, 254r–v. . Ibid., 254r. . Pol. 50, 92r. . Pol. 51 I, 237r. . Ibid., 252r.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 9 – 7 2



. In 1617, Ibid., 253v. . See Chapter 1, section “Eucharistic Miracles and Medieval Accusations against Jews.” . Miracle stories are reported in Pol. 51 I, 250r–v. No record of the Sandomierz case is preserved in the court records, but there is another record from 1639. Archiwum Państwowe in Kielce, Oddział in Sandomierz, Akta miasta Sandomierza 10; and a brief discussion in Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda” Żydów: Procesy o Rzekome Mordy Rytualne w Dawnej Polsce (Warsaw: Bellona: Wydawnictwo Fundacji Historia pro Futuro, 1995), 87–89. . Akta miasta Lublina in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin (hereafter, AmL) 140, 295v. . Ibid., 349r–350v. . Ibid., 349v. Borrowing clothes for church was not unusual, even from Jews; see Benjamin Slonik, Masa’at Binyamin (Cracow: Menahem Nahum ben Mosheh Maizels, 1632), responsum 86. . AmL 140, 349v. . Ibid., 349v–350v. . See, Chapter 2, especially sections “Measuring the Sacred and the Sacrilege” and “Christian Sacred Objects in Jewish Hands.” . AmL 143, 122–132. . Ibid., 124. . Ibid. . Ibid., 125. . Ibid., 126. . Ibid. . Ibid., 128. . Ibid., 130. The formula is partly untranslatable; it includes an old Polish phrase, na psa urok, na kozy urok, which sometimes has been casually translated as “knock on wood.” But this translation does not work in this case; moreover, Polish has another phrase for “knock on wood”—odpukać w niemalowane drewno. . AML 143, 131–132. . AmL 140, 206r–207v. A brief mention of this case appears in my first book, Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the PostReformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 114 where it is mistakenly placed in Przemyśl. . AmL 140, 206r. . Ibid., 207r. . Ibid., 207r–v, 211r. . Maciejowski, “Epistola Pastoralis,” G2v. . Akta miasta Kazimierza in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (ul. Sienna) (hereafter, AmKaz) K 267, “Protokół spraw kryminalnych (1611–1628),” 13–18.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 2 – 7 7

. JT 2059 “Acta nigra maleficorum Wisniciae ab Anno Domini 1665,” 13–19. . Ibid., 19–33. . Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 241–260, quote on 241. . Ibid., 242. . Ibid., 242, 244. . Ibid., 255. . Ibid., 244. . Ibid., 256–258. . This is what happened to Katarzyna Wejglowa in Cracow, first tried in 1529 in an Episcopal court for professing “Jewish faith,” reconciled with the church in 1530, and then retried in 1539. She was released for execution at the stake to the secular authorities in Cracow; on this, see Teter, Jews and Heretics, chap. 3. . Acta Episcopalia (henceforth, AE) 19, fol. 19r–v. . Ibid., 19r–v. . AE 23, 54r–56r. Licet ab initio was issued on July 21, 1542. . A perusal through the register of cases tried in the episcopal court in Cracow between 1466 and 1640 supports this; see Index Actorum Episcopi Cracoviensis I 1466–1640. . Bartłomiej Groicki, Ten Postępek Wybran Iest z Praw Cesarskich Który Karolus V Cesarz Wydać po Wszystkich Swoich Państwiech, Ktorym Się Nauka Daie, Iako w Tych Sądziech a Sprawach Około Karania na Gardle Abo na Zdrowiu Sędziowie y Każdy Rząd Ma Sie Zachować y Postępować Wedle Boiaźni Bożey Sprawiedliwie, Pobożnie, Roztropnie y Nieskwapliwie (Cracow: 1559, reprint 1954), Article 65. On the sense of obligation to prosecute heresy by magistrates, see Gregory, Salvation at Stake, chap. 3. . Reference to a canon of the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council and an article in canon law. . Bartłomiej Groicki, Porządek Sądow i Spraw Miejskich Prawa Majdeburskiego w Koronie Polskiej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Prawnicze, 1953 [1559]), 199–200. . Akta X. Sanguszków in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Oddział na Wawelu), Teka 101/36. . Akta miasta Rzeszowa 27, 348–351, 361, 362–364. Published most recently in Adam Kaźmierczyk, ed., Żydzi Polscy 1648–1772: Źródła (Cracow: Uniwersytet Jagielloński Katedra Judaistyki, 2001), 147–151, 169–171. . Kaźmierczyk, Żydzi Polscy, 147–148. . Ibid., 148. . Ibid. . Ibid., 148–149. . Ibid., 150–151. . Ibid., 169–171. . Kaźmierczyk, Żydzi Polscy, 170. The court cited in full the passage about punishment for blasphemy from Groicki’s manual to justify its verdict, Groicki, Ten Postępek, Article 65.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 8 – 8 0



. Akta miasta Jarosławia in Archiwum Państwowe in Przemyśl (hereafter, AmJar) 3, 42v–47v (41v–46v, old pagination). . AmJar 3, 44r (43r, old pagination). For the section quoted, see Jodocus Damhouder, Praxis Rerum Criminalium . . . Accesserunt Ejusdem Auctoris Sententiæ Selectæ (Antverpiæ: 1601; reprint, 1978), 124. . AmJar 3, 44v (43v, old pagination). For the passage quoted, see Damhouder, Praxis Rerum Criminalium, 53, chap. 28, nos. 11–12. . AmJar 3, 46v (45v, old pagination). . Ibid., “Śmierdzichu ty, uirzysz toć urządzę.” . Ibid., 44v–45r (43v–44r, old pagination). . Ibid., 48v (47v, old pagination). The oath was actually taken in “the Jewish synagogue in Jarosław” on the “Jewish Decalogue,” but in the presence of elders from the synagogue in Przemyśl. Given the small size of the Jewish community in Jarosław, this close relationship between them and the community in Przemyśl is not surprising; it is attested also in Jewish sources. At the turn of the seventeenth century, when Jarosław’s Jewish community was still lacking a synagogue and a Torah scroll, Rabbi Meir ben Gedalia of Lublin mentioned that Jews would bring the Torah scroll from Przemyśl to Jarosław to pray. Responsa Maharam of Lublin, no. 84. I thank my friend and colleague, Edward Fram of Ben-Gurion University, for this reference. . Eric Zafran, “An Alleged Case of Image Desecration by the Jews and Its Representation in Art: The Virgin of Cambron,” Journal of Jewish Art 2 (1975). . Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents 492–1555 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988–1990), vol. 1, 357–358. . Ibid., 358. . Zafran, “An Alleged Case of Image Desecration,” 66– 68. . Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, vol. 358. . On the iconography and printed dissemination of the story, see Zafran, “An Alleged Case of Image Desecration.” On other cases of anti-Jewish accusations of desecrating images, see Michele Luzzati, “Ebrei, Chiesa Locale, Principi e Popolo: Due Episodi di Distruzione di Immagini Sacre alla Fine del Quattrocento,” Quaderni Storici 22, no. 54 (1983). For an example of the inclusion of the story in Polish publications, see Sebastyan Miczyński, Zwierciadło Korony Polskiey: Urázy Ciezkie y Utrapienia Wielkie, Ktore Ponosi Od Zydow Wyrazaiące Synom Koronnym Ná Seym Walny w Roku Pańskim 1618 (Cracow: Máciej Jędrzeiowczyk, 1618), Artykul III. . Miczyński, Zwierciadło Korony Polskiey, 9. . Ibid., 10. . Miczyński’s chapter on “desecration of images” by Jews also includes a discussion of Jewish “desecration” of Christian holidays. He complains that Jews opened taverns and enticed Christians to drink instead of going to church. For Miczyński, the desecration of Christian space and objects extended also to sacred times. On this, see also Teter, Jews and Heretics, chap. 4, especially 60– 63.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 0 – 8 1

. Pol. 51 I, 272r–v; for the Sandomierz incident, see 286r. It should, however, be noted that the records of the castle court in Sandomierz were burned during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. . Isserles’ commentary on SA YD 151.10. The discussion in the Shulhan ‘Arukh pertains to questions of idolatry, not violence and potential trials. Commenting on the Tur 151.10, Yoel Sirkes noted that in his days, non-Jews generally did not introduce idols into their houses, “only at the time of illness.” The last comment might refer to the consecrated host brought by the priest to a sick person. He seems to be interpreting “idolatry” quite literally here. . Akta miasta Krakowa in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (ul. Sienna) (hereafter, AmKr) 867, 30–32. . Anonymous, attributed to Zvi Hirsch, Kidush Ha- Shem Shel Reb Matis Ve-Reb Pinhas Ve-Reb Abraham Zekhutam Ya‘amod Lanu Bi-Medinat Polin (n.p.). A unicum (Opp. 8o1103 (24)) is at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Majer Bałaban dated the work to 1666, but Israel Halperin connected the death of “Reb Abraham” to a 1722 case of a ritual murder accusation in Lublin. The work is attributed to Zvi Hirsch, but the name does not appear in the pamphlet itself; it appears at the end of a preceding pamphlet with which it was bound in the Oppenheim collection. Another pamphlet about two martyrs, bound in the same collection (Opp. 8o1103(36)), has the name of Hayyim ben R. Shalom from Poland, who was in Prostnitz (Prostejow) in Moravia. This pamphlet also has a similar woodcut to that appearing on the title page of the pamphlet about Kalahora. It appears that the work Kidush Ha- Shem shel Reb Matis was not published in Poland, as Bałaban maintained. It may have been published in Prague, as Halpern argued, but Halpern’s claim is based on the preceding pamphlet. All texts bound in this volume were published in Amsterdam, Prague, Furth, or Frankfurt a/Oder. Israel Halpern, ed., Pinkas Va’ad Arb’a Arazot (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1945), no. 4, 292–293. I thank Edward Fram for checking the different pamphlets for me at the Bodleian Library, and discussing them with me while on-site. . Anonymous, Kidush Ha- Shem Shel Reb Matis, unnumbered page, verso of the title. For the Polish records see Oss 55/II in Zakład im. Ossolińskich in Wrocław, 481, and Castrensia Cracoviensia in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Wawel) (hereafter, CC 90), 2414 and 2502. . Anonymous, Kidush Ha-Shem Shel Reb Matis, unnumbered, recto of the second sheet. I thank my colleague, Edward Fram, for discussing this passage with me. . For an earlier discussion of the affair, not without flaws, see Majer Balaban, Historja Żydow w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu: 1304–1868, 2 vols. (Cracow: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1991), vol. 2, 24–31. More recently, in another context, see Adam Kaźmierczyk, “The Rubinkowski Family: Converts in Kazimierz,” in Early Modern Poland: Borders and Boundaries, ed. Adam Teller and Magda Teter, Polin 22 (Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009).

n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 2 – 8 4



. Oss. 55/II, 481; CC 90, 2414, 2503. . Oss. 55/II, 481; CC 90, 2414, 2503. . Oss. 55/II, 481–2; CC 90, 2414–2415, 2504. . Oss. 55/II, 482; CC 90, 2415, 2504. . Oss. 55/II, 482; CC 90, 2416. . Oss. 55/II, 482; CC 90, 2417. . CC 90, 2507. . Oss. 55/II, 483; CC 90, 2507. . CC 481, 32–33. . Majer Bałaban identified the blind rabbi as Joshua Heszel. Majer Bałaban, Historja Żydow w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu: 1304–1868, 2 vols. (Cracow: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1991), vol. 2, 28. . Oss. 55/II, 485–486. . Kalahora was executed in December 1663. . Oss. 55/II, 486. . Magda Teter, “The Legend of Ger Zedek of Wilno as Polemic and Reassurance,” AJS Review 29, no. 2 (2005). When this article was published, I had not studied the case of Matatias Kalahora, and thus did not make that connection. But it seems suggestive that Kalahora’s case, publicized in Yiddish in the eighteenth century, would become part of a legend that emerged a few decades later. See also note 94 in this chapter. . Kaźmierczyk, “The Rubinkowski Family,” 204. . Quoted in Kaźmierczyk, “The Rubinkowski Family,” 205n72. . Kaźmierczyk, “The Rubinkowski Family,” 204. . Bałaban, Historia Żydów w Krakowie, vol. 2, 26n26; Kaźmierczyk, “The Rubinkowski Family,” 205. . See, for example, the case of Mojzes Fortis, charged with this particular crime by a Christian man who sought to be rid of him in 1724. Biblioteka X. Czartoryskich in Cracow (hereafter, Bcz) 5809-1.10747-53, “Korespondencja Elżbiety Sieniawskiej,” 657– 665, 669, 673– 683 (3/5/1724, 7/18/1724, 8/26/1724, 9/17/1724, 11/24/1724, 12/3/1724, 12/14/1725). On this, see Murray Jay Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: MagnateJewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 153, 180–181. . On the Łyszczyński case, see Andrzej Nowicki, “Pięć Fragmentów z Dzieła ‘De Non Existentia Dei’ Kazimierza Łyszczyńskiego,” Zeszyty filozoficzne 1, EuhemerPrzegląd religioznawczy (1957); Andrzej Nowicki, “Aparatura Pojęciowa Rozważa Kazimierza Łyszczyńskiego (1634–1689) O Religii i O Stosunkach Między Ludźmi,” Zeszyty filozoficzne 3, Euhemer-Przegląd religioznawczy (1962). For archival material, see manuscripts in the Biblioteka Kórnicka PAU (Kórnik) (hereafter, BK): BK 443, BK 967, BK 1206, and BK 1288. . Nowicki, “Aparatura Pojęciowa,” 53, 73.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 4 – 8 8

. BK 443, 187; BK 967, 20; and BK 1206. . BK 967, 22v. . BK 1288, 261v. . The manuscript is incomplete; thus, only one example survived, that of King Ahab (1 Kings), BK 1206. . BK 443. Five were culled and published in Nowicki, “Pięć Fragmentów.” . BK 443, 197; Nowicki, “Pięć Fragmentów,” 74. . BK 443, 197–198; Nowicki, “Pięć Fragmentów,” 74– 75. . BK 1206. . BK 967, 23. . Nowicki, “Pięć Fragmentów,” 75. The unclear word “garamantes” may be a reference to the imaginary people described by Renaissance writers, among them Antonio de Guevara (Relox de principes, 1529), Mambrino Roseo (Elogio dei Garamanti, 1543), or Antonio Francesco Doni (I Mondi, 1552); see Paul F. Grendler, “Utopia in Renaissance Italy: Doni’s ‘New World,’ ” Journal of the History of Ideas 26 no. 4 (1965): 474–494. . BK 443, 194; and a fragment on BK 967, 22. . BK 443, 199; and BK 967, 22. . BK 443, 191. . BK 967, 22v. . BK 1206. . BK 1288, 262. . BK 1288, 262v. . Nowicki, “Aparatura Pojęciowa,” 75. . BK 1206. . Nowicki, “Aparatura Pojęciowa,” 75. . BK 1288, 263. . Ibid. . BK 1288, 264. . Nowicki, “Aparatura Pojęciowa,” 78. . BK 443, 188; BK 967, 21v; and BK 1288, 258. The affair was even covered by the Paris Gazette in March and April 1689; see Andrzej Nowicki, “Studia na Łyszczyskim: Pięć wiadomoci o Łyszczyskim w Gazecie paryskiej,” Zeszyty filozoficzne 4, Euhemer-Przegląd religioznawczy (1963). . Józef Andrzej Gierowski, Rzeczpospolita w Dobie Upadku, 1700–1740: Wybór Źródeł (Wrocław: Zakład im. Ossoliskich, 1955), 98– 99. . Gierowski, Rzeczpospolita w Dobie Upadku, 98– 99. Also briefly mentioned in Janusz Tazbir, Studia Nad Kulturą Staropolską, Klasycy Współczesnej Polskiej Myśli Humanistycznej (Cracow: TAiWPN Universitas, 2001), 359–360. . “Willingness to Kill” is the title of chapter 3 in Gregory, Salvation at Stake.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 9 – 9 1



Chapter 4: The Making of a Polish Jerusalem . For the texts of the early eighteenth-century version of Kyrie Eleison and the Liturgy of the Hours, see Drogi Depozyt Ciała y Krwie Iezusowey Powierzony y Zostawiony Oycom Wielebnym Karmelitom Bożego Ciała w Trzech Hostiach Kamienicy Swidwinskiey w Miecie Poznaniu Od Żydów Ukłotych Powtornym Drukiem Swiatu Od Wielebnego Zgromadzenia Oycow Karmelitow Tegoż Depozytu Possessorow Ze Wszytkiemi Przedziwnemi Cudami z Nowo Przydanymi Medytacyami, Dyssertacyami, Godzinkami y Litaniami Opisany i Pokazany (Poznań: Drukarnia Akademicka, 1722), 169–185. . Robert Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century: The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of Częstochowa (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), 127. . Some scholars have been unsure about Rerus’s name. Given the type, his name in the booklet sometimes has been read as Tomasz Kerus. Some even have claimed that he was Hieronim Podwodowski, a canon of Poznań, Cracow, and Gniezno—to whom the book was dedicated. See, e.g., Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda” Żydów: Procesy o Rzekome Mordy Rytualne w Dawnej Polsce (Warsaw: Bellona, Wydawnictwo Fundacji Historia pro Futuro, 1995), 51. But archival records of the Carmelite friars in Rome suggest that Tomasz Rerus was a real person. He is noted among the “illustrious men” in the province of Poland. It is in that manuscript that Tomasz Rerus is identified as a professor of “languages especially Hebrew.” See II Polonia Conventus 5, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani in Rome, third document in the busta, “Compendiosa Historiae miraculi circa Saratissimam Eucharisitae Sacramentum”, fol. 2v. . On the development of this kind of narrative, see Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). . Witold Maisel, “Przekształcenia Przestrzenne Miasta w Murach,” in Dzieje Poznania, ed. Jerzy Topolski (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988), 395. . Kazimierz Malinowski et al., Dziesięć Wieków Poznania (Poznań: Sztuka, 1956), 75– 79. . For an overview of the history of Poznań, see Jerzy Topolski and Antoni Gąsiorowski, eds., Poznań: Zarys Dziejów (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1973); Zygmunt Boras and Lech Trzeciakowski, W Dawnym Poznaniu: Fakty i Wydarzenia z Dziejów Miasta do Roku 1918 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1971); and Jerzy Topolski, ed., Dzieje Poznania (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988). . On the legal structure of Poznań, see Witold Maisel and Andrzej Zdzisław Bzdęga, eds., Poznańska Księga Prawa Magdeburskiego i Miśnieńskiego: Das Posener Buch Des Magdeburger Und Meissner Rechts (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1964); Witold Maisel, Przywileje Miasta Poznania XIII–XVIII Wieku, Wydawnictwa Źródłowe Komisji Historycznej (Poznań: Poznańskie Towarzystwo



n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 1 – 9 3

Przyjaciół Nauk, 1994); Witold Maisel, Archeologia Prawna Polski (Poznań: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982); Witold Maisel, ed., Wilkierze Poznańskie: Statuta Civitatis Posnaniensis (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1966); Witold Maisel, Poznańskie Prawo Karne do Końca XVI Wieku (Poznań: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicz, 1963); and Witold Maisel, Sądownictwo Miasta Poznania do Końca XVI Wieku (Poznań: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1961). . Maria Danuta Łabędzka-Topolska, “Wzrost Wpływów Reformacji,” in Dzieje Poznania, ed. Jerzy Topolski (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988), vol. I, 496–497. . A Decree by King Zygmunt August (D 474), June 26, 1555, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań. Łabędzka-Topolska, “Wzrost Wpływów Reformacji,” 498. See also Maisel, Poznańskie Prawo Karne do Końca XVI Wieku, 207–210. . See Introduction herein for a discussion of this law. The text of the Sejm constitution was published in Volumina Legum: Przedruk Zbioru Praw Staraniem XX. Pijarów w Warszawie od Roku 1732 Do Roku 1782 Wydanego, 2nd ed., 10 vols. (Petersburg: Jozafat Ohryzka, 1859; reprint 1980), vol. II, 21 [625], no. 668. . Łabędzka-Topolska, “Wzrost Wpływów Reformacji,” especially 500. . Józef Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno- Statystyczny Miasta Poznania w Dawniejszych Czasach, ed. Jacek Wiesiołowski, 2 vols. (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Miejskie, 1998), vol. I, 210. . Topolski, Dzieje Poznania, vol. I, 511. For reports about Poznań, see Polonia 50: “Annuae et Historiae Poloniae 1555–1600,” Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter, ARSI), fols. 1–42. . The parish church, founded in 1263 soon after the city location, was consumed by fire in 1447 and rebuilt in 1471. Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno-Statystyczny; Józef Łukaszewicz, Krótki Opis Historyczny Kościołów Parochialnych, Kościółków, Kaplic, Klasztorów, Szkółek Parochialnych, Szpitali i Innych Zakładów Dobroczynnych w Dawnej Dyecezyi Poznańskiej, 3 vols. (Poznań: Księgarnia Jana Konstantego Żupańskiego, 1858 [1998]), vol. II, 89; Zofia Kurzawa and Andrzej Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania: Przewodnik (Poznań: Księgarnia Św. Wojciecha, 2006), 87–108. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 122–131. . The permission was granted in 1282; see Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 131–137. . Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno- Statystyczny, vol. 2, 80–89; Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 41–84. . Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno- Statystyczny, vol. 2, 95– 96; Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 143–149. . The church was rebuilt in the sixteenth century and reconsecrated in 1595; see Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno- Statystyczny, vol. 2, 96– 97; Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 159–167.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 3 – 9 5



. Founded in 1455–1456, after damage caused by flooding, a new monastery was built outside the city walls in 1471–1472 at the behest of the bishop of Poznań, Andrzej of Bnin. Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno-Statystyczny, vol. 2, 115–118; Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 174–186. On the Wrocław trial, see Rubin, Gentile Tales, 119–128. For primary sources related to the trial, see “De Persecutione Iudaeorum Vratislaviensium a 1453,” in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, ed. Wojciech Kętrzyński (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1961), vol. IV, 1–5; “De Expulsione Iudaeorum,” in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, ed. Aleksander Semkowicz (Lwów: Księgarnia Gubrynowicza i Schmidta, 1878), vol. III, 785–789. . ARSI Pol. 50, 5, 43–50v. . See, for example, ibid., 36, 41v, 56v, 75r; ARSI Pol. 51 I, 110. . ARSI Pol. 50, 32v–33v. . Evidence of the 1596 “tumult” can be found in Akta miasta Poznania in Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań (hereafter, AmPoz), I 2264. . Ibid., 1–2. . “Exercitia Haereseon e civitate sublata,” I 11 Acta Consularia 1571–1626, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań, 206r–v. . AmPoz I 2265, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań, 11a–11h. . Łukasz Górka intervened on behalf of Jews in the Sochaczew case. See Chapter 5 of this book. As late as 1583, Stanisław Górka, the palatine of Poznań, granted the Bohemian Brethren a permission to build an aqueduct to their residence in the St. Wojciech jurydyka. AmPoz D 488, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań. . Boras and Trzeciakowski, W Dawnym Poznaniu, 128. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 30. . It was consecrated in 1603. Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 171; Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno- Statystyczny, vol. 2, 130–131. . The restorations began in 1605; see Łukaszewicz, Obraz HistorycznoStatystyczny, vol. 2, 116. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, vol. 2, 151; Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno-Statystyczny, 123. . Decrees protecting Jews from violence were preserved from 1518, 1523, 1576, 1577, 1580 (the last three are related to single riots in 1576), 1628, 1633, 1639, 1687, and so on. For the decrees and other documents related to anti-Jewish violence, see, for example, AmPoz D 541, D 542, D 551, D 551a, D 553, D 564, D 573, I 2250, and I 2251. . On this incident, see ARSI Pol. 50, 32v–33v. Also, AmPoz D 551, D 551a, and D 553. . This is visible in imagery in the 1609 book by Tomasz Treter, its 1772 Polish version, and the frescoes in the chapel of the Most Holy Blood. . Drogi Depozyt (1722), 39.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 6 – 9 8

. Franciszek Powsiński, Depozyt Ciała y Krwie Iezusowey Powierzony y Zostawiony Oycom Wielebnym Karmelitom w Kościele Bożego Ciała, We Trzech Hostyach w Kamienicy Świdwinskiey w Mieście Poznańskim Od Żydów Ukłotych (Cracow: Franciszek Cezary, 1663), 4–5. . Drogi Depozyt (1722), 7. . For a recent book on these complicated relations, see Adam Teller, Hayim Be-Tsavta: Ha-Rov’a Ha-Yehudi Shel Poznan Ba-Mahatsit Ha-Rishonah Shel HaMe’ah Ha- Shev’a ‘Esreh (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2003). . Ibid., chap. 4. . AmPoz I 2250, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań, 5. For a discussion of a later period, see Teller, Hayim Be-Tsavta, chap. 5, especially 85–89. . January 1580, AmPoz D 552, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań. The palatine at the time was Stanisław Górka. . AmPoz I 11, 100a. . AmPoz D 554–D 556. . In 1611, 1618, and 1620, see, for example, AmPoz D 557–D 559 for 1611, D 560 for 1619, and D 561 for 1620. . AmPoz I 35, “Acta Consularia, 1617–1623,” 1031–1039. For a discussion of a later census of 1641, see Teller, Hayim Be-Tsavta. . Tomasz Rerus, Historya o Dziwnym Nalezieniu Ciała Bożego: na Tym Mieyscu Gdzie Teraz w Poznaniu Kościół Bożego Ciała Zowią z Niektoremi Cudami Ktore Pan Bog Wszechmogący y po Dziś Dzień Okazować Raczy (Cracow: Stefan Szarffenberg, 1583). . The author uses the term “cymborium”— a ciborium. But the description is that of tabernaculum, the place at the altar where the consecrated Eucharists are stored in a ciborium. A ciborium is a chalicelike covered receptacle. Another object associated with the Eucharist is a pyx, usually a small box used for carrying the consecrated Eucharist to the sick. . Rerus, Historya, n.p., but a page preceding B. . Rerus, Historya, B. . Ibid. On Jews as “dogs” in Christian theology and anti-Jewish writings, see Kenneth R. Stow, Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters: Continuity in the Catholic-Jewish Encounter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). . Rerus, Historya, B. . Ibid., B r–B ii. . Ibid., B ii. The language is ambiguous. It might indicate that the festival on August 15, 1399, was on Friday, which would be true; that the eve of the festival was on Friday; or that it happened on the eve of the festival, on Thursday. Placing the events on Friday would fit the structured narrative that continues to say that Jews then buried the hosts, which in turn were discovered on Sunday— creating a nice parallel to Jesus’s crucifi xion and resurrection. . Rerus, Historya, B ii r–v, B iii.

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. Ibid., B ii verso–B iii r–v. The association between Valentine and epilepsy comes from a German phonetic association of vallendes siechtum, or fallendes siechtum, (falling illness) with the saint’s name. This underlines connections between German lands and culture and Poland. See Steven D. Sargent, “Miracle Books and Pilgrimage Shrines in Late Medieval Bavaria,” Historical Reflections 13, no. 2 (1986): 468. . Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 103–104. . See later in this chapter a discussion of Tomasz Treter’s 1609 Latin book on Poznań’s three hosts, as well as Adryan Zarembiusz’s Polish version. Tomasz Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia Et Miracula: Quae in Ecclesia Posnaniensis Ordinis S. Mariae Carmelitarum Divina Bonitas Operatae (n.p.: Blasius Treter, 1609); Adryan Zarembiusz, Wywód Historyey o Naświętszym Sakramencie, y Cudów Ktore Pan Bog w Poznańskiem Kościele y Oyców Karmelitanów Pokazuie, Tudziesz y Parergon abo Przydatek dla Ewangelików przez Oyca Adryana Zarkaiusza Przeora Klasztoru Poznańskiego Carmelitana do Druku Podane (Poznań: Jan Wolrab, 1616). . For the text in Polish translation, see Kanty Kowalski, O Kościele Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu, Jako Odpowiedź na Rzecz Tyczącą Się Tego Kościoła w Dziele Obraz Poznania (Poznań: Karol Pompejusz, 1840), 38–39. A seventeenth-century manuscript mentions this short narrative on the marble plaque; II Polonia Conventus 5, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, Busta “Poznań 1598–1660,” third document dated in pencil, 1602. . Treter’s book was referenced in the summary of the legend sent to the general of the Carmelite order in Rome; I Polonia 3, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, “De Fundatione et Dotatione Monasterii Carmelitarum Posnanenses,” 15v–20v. . On the influence of Sochaczew, see Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 50–51. On Breslau/Wrocław, see Rubin, Gentile Tales, 119–128. On the trial in Sochaczew itself, see Chapter 5 in this book. . Significantly in Mecklenburg and the Mark Brandenburg, and also in Bavaria, the region of several prominent sites of eucharistic cults. On Bavaria, see most recently, Mitchell B. Merback, “Fount of Mercy, City of Blood: Cultic Anti-Judaism and the Pulkau Passion Altarpiece,” Art Bulletin 87, no. 4 (2005); Mitchell B. Merback, “Channels of Grace: Pilgrimage Architecture, Eucharistic Imagery, and Visions of Purgatory at the Host-Miracle Churches of Late Medieval Germany,” in Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles, ed. Sarah Blick and Rita Tekippe (Leiden: Brill, 2005). On Mecklenburg and the Mark Brandenburg, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), especially 55, 70. On the other cases, see Rubin, Gentile Tales, 72, 149. . On Heiligengrabe, see Friederike Rupprecht, Von Blutenden Hostien, Frommen Pilgern und Widerspenstigen Nonnen: Heiligengrabe Zwischen Spätmittelalter und Reformation (Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2005).

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. Rubin, Gentile Tales, 149; for the images, see 150, plate 117. . Mitchell Merback called it a reversal of a miracle; Merback, “Channels of Grace,” 606. . In Andechs, three miraculous hosts—including two said to have been consecrated by Pope Gregory I (590– 604) and one by Pope Leo IX (1049–1054)—were supposedly found by a mouse after being hidden for centuries. The symbolism of Gregory I is significant in that Gregory’s Mass became an iconic representation of the miracle of transubstantiation, and at least the connection between Andechs and Poznań was not lost to the anonymous chronicler, who linked the story in Poznań to an incident believed to have happened during Communion celebrated by Gregory the Great. Elżbieta Belcarzowa, Głosy Polskie w Łacińskich Kazaniach Średniowiecznych (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1981), vol. 1, 60. One of the best accounts of the Wilsnack site is by Bynum, Wonderful Blood, chap. 2. On Andechs, see Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 39–43; Karl Bosl, Wolf-Christian von der Mülbe, and Karl-Ludwig Ay, Andechs: Der Heilige Berg: Von Der Frühzeit Bis Zur Gegenwart (München: Prestel, 1993). . According to the Wilsnack legend, a local priest, Johann Kabuz (or Cabbucz) found three hosts in the scorched remains of a church destroyed by marauding troops in 1383. Despite the fire and the rain that followed, the hosts were “dry and intact,” except for stains of blood. The site caused great anxiety, and the fear about the validity of the miracles was so great that, in 1447, Pope Eugene IV required that “a freshly consecrated host be placed alongside the miraculous ones offered for veneration.” Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 25–27. Similar anxiety can be noted regarding the Poznań hosts. In 1779 in the wake of a visitation of the church, it was ordered that “from time to time two newly consecrated hosts” should be placed before the relics of the three hosts. See Kowalski, O Kościele Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu, 29. . See Chapter 1 in this book. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 44. In a different context, this challenge and skepticism also came in the wake of the Trent trial in 1475; R. Po-chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, CT: Yeshiva University Library and Yale University Press, 1992). . Ibid., 43. . The Wilsnack-like triangular arrangement in Poznań is mentioned in the 1779 description of the contents of the church’s monstrance: “One round host is on top and two under it.” Kowalski, O Kościele Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu, 29. . Rubin, Gentile Tales, 179. See also the illustration on the title page of Hartmut Kühne and Anne-Katrin Ziesak, Wunder, Wallfahrt, Widersacher: Die Wilsnackfahrt (Regensburg: Pustet, 2005). . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula. See also, for example, Bosl, Mülbe, and Ay, Andechs, for representations of the monstrance with three hosts in Andechs. I thank Mitchell Merback of Johns Hopkins University for this reference.

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. See, for example, the chronology of Heilgengrabe in Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 59– 61, more generally, chap. 3. On this in the context for Mary of Częstochowa, see Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, 126–128. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, chap. 3, especially on Doberan 62, and on Güstrow 63. . See, e.g., Manfred Eder and Franz Mussner, Die “Deggendorfer Gnad”: Entstehung Und Entwicklung Einer Hostienwallfahrt Im Kontext Von Theologie Und Geschichte (Deggendorf: Stadt Degendorf, 1992). . Edith Wenzel, “Jews and Judaism in Sixteenth-Century German Literature,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth- Century Germany, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 406. . Its versions were published in 1500 and 1520, and a longer, more developed version was published in 1582 and again in 1604. Wenzel, “Jews and Judaism,” 407. Von Tegkendorff Das Geschicht Wie Die Juden Das Hailig Sacrament Haben Zugericht Werdt Ir in Disem Büchlein Verston Was Den Schalckhaff tigen Juden Ist Worden Zu Lon (Augsburg 1520); Die Alt Und Warhaff tig Geschicht Wie Vor 245 Jaren, Die Juden Zu Degckendorff, Mit Dem Hochwürdigen Und Heyligen Sacrament Seindt Umbgangen Gesangweyß Gestelt (Straubing: Sum[m]er, 1582). See also the case of Pulkau, where an accusation of host desecration took place, resulting in violence against Jews in 1338. The chapel was built there only in 1396, and the altar depicting the desecration was ordered in 1520. Rubin, Gentile Tales, 65– 68. . The bulls by Boniface IX were issued in 1401 and 1403, and the documents by Innocent VII and King Jagiełło were both in 1406. . The wording in the 1403 bull by Pope Boniface is “Propter miraculum ibidem de eodem Corpore noviter factum.” Tadeusz Trajdos, “Fundacja Klasztoru Karmelitów Trzewiczkowych Pw. Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu a Kult Eucharystyczny Władysława II Jagiełły,” Poznańskie Studia Teologiczne 5 (1984): 321. The founding privilege of King Jagiełło can be found in Franciszek Piekosiński, Kodeks Dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski: Codex Diplomaticus Maioris Poloniae, vol. 5 (Poznań: Biblioteka Kórnicka, 1908), nos. 91 and 482. Th is is also discussed in detail in Trajdos, “Fundacja Klasztoru Karmelitów,” 321–322; Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 47–49. Scholars have generally followed Rodgero Prümers, “Der Hostiendiebstahl zu Posen im Jahre 1399,” Zeitschrift der Historischen Gesellschaft für die Provinz Posen 20, no. 1 (1905). See also Rubin, Gentile Tales, 91. Miri Rubin, however, assumes that there was “a case” in Poznań in 1399. On the vagueness of the initial versions of miracle stories in German lands, see Bynum, Wonderful Blood, e.g., 52, 55. . Kowalski, O Kościele Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu, 45. . Jan Długosz, Annales Seu Cronicae Incliti Regni Poloniae, vol. Liber X (1370– 1405) (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985), 236. See also Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 48; Trajdos, “Fundacja Klasztoru Karmelitów,” 322.

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. The original text is in Belcarzowa, Głosy Polskie, vol. 1, 60. A short passage was also quoted in Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 48. . Belcarzowa, Głosy Polskie, vol. 1, 60. . On this, see also Rubin, Gentile Tales, 173–181. For examples of such broadsheets, see Walter L. Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1550–1600: A Pictorial Catalogue (New York: Abaris Books, 1975); Dorothy Alexander and Walter L. Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1600–1700: A Pictorial Catalogue (New York: Abaris Books, 1977); and Max Geisberg and Walter L. Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1500–1550 (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1974). . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, chap. 2. . On Wilsnack, see Kühne and Ziesak, Wunder, Wallfahrt, Widersacher; Paul Heitz and Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, Das Wunderblut Zu Wilsnack; Niederdeutscher Einblattdruck Mit 15 Holzschnitten Aus Der Zeit Von 1510–1520, Drucke Und Holzschnitte Des XV. Und XVI. Jahrhunderts in Getreuer Nachbildung (Strassburg: Heitz, 1904). On Heligengrabe, see Kühne and Ziesak, Wunder, Wallfahrt, Widersacher, 62– 65, especially the illustration on 63. Some eucharistic cults promoted contemporary healing miracles, like Wilsnack and Poznań, while some operated as veneration sites, focusing on postmortem intercessions for those in purgatory. On this, see Merback, “Channels of Grace.” See also, Rubin, Gentile Tales, 173–181. . R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), chap. 3; Hsia, Trent 1475, 56– 60. See also David Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), chap. 4 “Little Simon’s Body.” . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, chap. 3. R. Po-chia Hsia noted that there were fifteen hundred copies of the Latin version and a thousand of the German version published in 1493. After that, a number of pirated, and cheaper, editions also appeared: German in 1497 and 1500, and Latin in 1498. Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 48. See also Eder and Mussner, Die “Deggendorfer Gnad,” 251–254. . See Hsia, Trent 1475, 57, 128. Also, representations of ritual murder in Poland, for example, in the church of St. Paul in Sandomierz, and a painting in the Muzeum miasta Jarosławia. . The broadsides about Passau were in the 1490s and 1500. Rubin, Gentile Tales, 174. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 68– 69. . In the sixteenth century, it is estimated that 54 percent of Poznań’s trade extended beyond Polish borders to the west, with the Mark Brandenburg as a major trading province. Marian Drozdowski, “Poznań Ośrodkiem Handlu Międzynarodowego, Regionalnego i Lokalnego,” in Dzieje Poznania, ed. Jerzy Topolski (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988), 469. . The pamphlet about Sternberg was, in fact, printed in Magdeburg. Rubin, Gentile Tales, 177. On the Magdeburg clergy and Wilsnack, see Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 25–29.

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. Melchior Nering was the first printer; the press was not long-lived. Topolski, Dzieje Poznania, vol. I/2, 533–551. . Rerus, Historya, A iii recto–verso. . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, A3r–v, Bv. . Powsiński, Depozyt Ciała y Krwie Iezusowey, 32. . Ibid. . Drogi Depozyt (1722), “Przedmowa,” especially 2. . Rubin, Gentile Tales, 134. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 49. . Ibid., 29. On the impact of the Reformation on pilgrimage sites in Bavaria, see Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, chap. 2. . On the decline and revival of pilgrimage sites in Bavaria, see Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints. . Jacek Wiesiołowski, “Funkcjonowanie Poznańskiego Kultu Pątniczego w Kościele Bożego Ciała (1493–1604),” Kronika miasta Poznania 3–4 (1992): 135. . Rerus, Historya, “Przedmowa do Chrześcijańskiego czytelnika.” . Rerus, Historya, n.p., but after B iiii and second to the last page. . Tomasz Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula quae in Ecclesia Posnanensi Ordinis S. M. Carmelitarum (n.p.: Blasius Treter, 1609), especially C3 verso. . See frescoes on the ceiling of the church of the Most Holy Blood of Christ in Poznań; Kazimierz Miedzwiedzki, Jerozolima Nowa w Poznaniu Roku 1399 Stała Się: Trzy Święte Hostye w Poznaniu 1399 Roku Nożami Od Żydów Ukłóte (Poznań: Akademia Poznańska, 1772); Mieczysław Noskowicz, Najświętsze Trzy Hostie 1399 (Poznań: Kazimierz Nowak, 1926). . Adryan Zarembiusz, Wywód historyey o naświętszym Sakramencie, y cudów ktore Pan Bog w poznańskiem kościele y Oyców Karmelitanów pokazuie, tudziesz y parergon abo przydatek dla Ewangelików przez Oyca Adryana Zarkaiusza przeora klasztoru poznańskiego Carmelitana do druku podane (Poznań: Jan Wolrab, 1616), unnumbered, fol. 2 in the dedication. The book was dedicated to Anna Radziwiłłowa, the wife of a prominent Lithuanian magnate. . Yet, in Jewish historiography, such anti-Jewish tales have been seen almost exclusively as part of the history of “anti-Semitism.” . Zarembiusz, Wywód historyey, 19v, 29r–v. . Ibid., 30 r–v. . Powsiński, Depozyt Ciała y Krwie Iezusowey, 9. . Drogi Depozyt (1722), 40–41. . Rerus, Historya, B iii. . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, n.p. See also Zarembiusz, Wywód historyey, chap. 8. . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, n.p.; Zarembiusz, Wywód historyey, chap. 8; Powsiński, Depozyt Ciała y Krwie Iezusowey, 22.

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. Powsiński, Depozyt Ciała y Krwie Iezusowey, 22. . The phrase was coined by Philip Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 27–28. . Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 27–28. . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, A3. . Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 27. See also Sargent, “Miracle Books and Pilgrimage Shrines,” 460. . On this, see, for example, Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), chap. 10; and Holger A. Klein, “Eastern Objects and Western Desires: Relics and Reliquaries between Byzantium and the West,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004). . Robert I. Burns, “Relic Vendors, Barefoot Friars, and Spanish Muslims: Reflections on Medieval Economic and Religious History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24, no. 1 (1982): 158; Helen L. Parish, Monks, Miracles, and Magic: Reformation Representations of the Medieval Church (London: Routledge, 2005), 11. . Burns, “Relic Vendors, Barefoot Friars,” 158. . Fourth Lateran Council, Canon 62, in Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed and Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990); Parish, Monks, Miracles, and Magic, 11. . The bull probably applied also to the relic trade. Parish, Monks, Miracles, and Magic, 11; Katharine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York: Zone Books, 2006), 47; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Authority, the Family, and the Dead in Late Medieval France,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 4 (1990); Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse,” Viator 12 (1981). . Sargent, “Miracle Books and Pilgrimage Shrines,” 469. . On this see, Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images. . Sargent, “Miracle Books and Pilgrimage Shrines,” 460. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood. . The fifteenth-century sources date the arrival to 1384; Henryk Kowalewicz, Monika Kowalewiczowa, and Zofia Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie o Częstochowskim Obrazie Panny Maryi: XV i XVI Wiek (Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax, 1983), 6. For a recent study of the rise of the shrine in English, see Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images. . It was the village of Kalej, just a few kilometers away from the monastery. . Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 10. The festivals included those devoted to Mary, the Nativity, Circumcision, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter, and the Ascension. For a full list and a discussion of this indulgence, see Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, 92– 93. . The chronicle was composed between 1455 and 1480. Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 12.

n o t e s t o pa g e 1 1 1

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. Długosz, Annales Seu Cronicae Incliti Regni Poloniae; my translation of the text quoted in Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 10. See also, Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, 3 and 69 (translation of the full passage). . Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 10–11. . For a succinct summary of the legends and for the analysis of their possible genealogy, see Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, 49– 68. The first full version appeared in a 1474 manuscript, Translatio Tabulae Beatae Mariae Virginis quam Sanctus Lucas Depinxit propriis manibus. The text in Latin and the Polish transcription, along with a facsimile copy, was published in Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 62–89. A Latin transcription was also published in Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, 190–197. . Hie volget dy historie, wy das Bylde der Junckfrawen Marie von dem Heyligen Sant Lucas Gemolt von der Heilegen Stadt Jerusalem komen sey Czestachaw (Cracow, 1514). The German original, a Polish translation, and a facsimile copy are published in Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 92–109. There is also a Latin version of this text, but it comes from a late sixteenth-century manuscript. In 1523, a renowned Cracow printer, Florian Ungler, printed a Latin booklet that included a list of miracles: Piotr Rydzyński, Historia pulchra et stupendis miraculis referta imaginis Mariae, quomodo et unde in clarum montem Czastochowiae et Olsztyn Advenerit (Cracow: Florian Ungler, 1523). A Polish version by Mikołaj of Wilkowiecko from the late 1560s, Historya o Obrazie w Częstochowie Panny Maryey y o Cudach rozmaitych tey wielebny tablicy, expanded the list of miracles. The Latin transcription and the facsimile copy of the 1523 version are published in Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 164–204; the Polish version appears there on 206–239. . St. Luke is said to have painted the image after Mary’s death on the cedar table at which Mary used to sit— or, according to another version, the table at which Mary and Jesus had dined. Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 12, 30, 75. . Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 34, 300. . Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, chap. 3. . It was said to have happened when Prince Władysław of Opole (Opolczyk), the governor of parts of Ruthenia, fought against Tartars and Lithuanians. According to the story, not having enough troops, he began to pray fervently to the Virgin for help and was victorious. Some elements of the story are present elsewhere. For a full version, see Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 35, 79. There are similar motifs in eucharistic stories; see, for example, the legend of Heiligengrabe in Merback, “Channels of Grace,” 608; and Rupprecht, Von Blutenden Hostien. . This is how they were described in the Polish language pamphlet from the 1560s; Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 212. For a



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 1 – 1 15

detailed analysis of this motif, see Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, chap. 3. Upon discovering the damaged painting, the monks took it to Cracow to the king, Władysław Jagiełło, asking for help. Though the best painters were hired to repair it, “the scars” could not be mended. Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 141, 173, 212. . See also Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, 6. . Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 72. . Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, chap. 3. . Transcriptions of some of the miracle books from Jasna Góra are published in Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, 198–218. . Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images, chaps. 4–5. . For the description of all miracles, see Kowalewicz, Kowalewiczowa, and Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie, 173–180, 212–218. . Ibid., 178, 216. . Rerus, Historya, B iiii r–v. . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, a recto–verso, see also b verso. The word used was cohonestandum. . II Polonia Conventus 5, “Poznań 1598–1660,” in Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, third document in that case, n.p. . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia Et Miracula, e3 recto–verso. . Ibid., b3 verso. Treter also mentions St. Anne as another example of failed intervention; see there, o recto. . Ibid., c a verso. . In a section that includes curing from the “French disease,” he includes a story of the canon and archdeacon of Gniezno’s Metropolitan church, who had suffered two years from morbo Gallico before he was cured following oblatione votiva in Poznań’s Corpus Christi church. On the miracles in Częstochowa, see Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images. . Treter, Sacratissimi Corporis Christi Historia et Miracula, a2 verso, unnumbered page, and f2 verso. . For an overview of these developments, see Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania. . That the Dominicans promoted the cult of Mary through a confraternity of the rosary is not unique to Poznań. Throughout Europe, scholars have found this connection; see, e.g., Christopher F. Black and Pamela Gravestock, Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 10. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 24. For an image of the statue of the Man of Sorrow (Vir Dolorum), preserved in the parish Church of St. Stanislaus in Poznań, see 104. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 26.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 15 – 1 1 8



. “Memoriale ex parte conventus Poznanensi Ord. Carmelitarum,” II PoloniaConventus 5, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, Rome. . “Deportatio Sacrae Mensae ad Aedem Sacratissimi Corporis Christi,” I 11 Acta Consularia 1571–1626, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań, 219v–220r; “Fundationes Monasterium FF antiquae Regularis observantiae per Regnum Poloniae adiacentes breviter collectae per R. P. M. Alexandrum Koslinski,” Polonia I 3, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, 16r. . AmPoz I 11, 219v, 220r. . “Fundationes Monasterium FF antiquae Regularis observantiae per Regnum Poloniae adiacentes breviter collectae per R. P. M. Alexandrum Koslinski,” Polonia I 3, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, 16r. See, e.g., Drogi Depozyt (1722), 47–50. . For the broadsheet, see Walter L. Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1550–1600: A Pictorial Catalogue (New York: Abaris Books, 1975), vol. 2, 703. . Saturday, October 24, 1620; AmPoz I 11, 219v–220r. . Maisel, Sądownictwo Miasta Poznania do Końca XVI Wieku, 62. . AmPoz, D 465. . Maisel, Sądownictwo Miasta Poznania do Końca XVI Wieku, 55. . AmPoz, D 475. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 110–111. . These efforts were made in 1644; Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 111; Łukaszewicz, Obraz Historyczno- Statystyczny, vol. II, 126. . In 1648, AmPoz, I 2251, 3–11. . Sigismund Grudziński donated his part to the Carmelites in March 1659; Łukasz Opaliński ceded the rights to his part of the house on July 15, 1659, and a month later, Andrzej Karol Grudziński, the Palatine palatine of Kalisz, did the same. The transactions apparently were inscribed in the Castle Court records, but I was unable to locate them. Copies, however, were sent to Rome to the general of the Carmelite order, and they are preserved there, II Polonia 5, Poznań 1598–1660, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, document “Status Causae 1659,” pages unnumbered. . II Polonia 5, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, document “Status Causae 1659” pages unnumbered. Also, a transcript of the decree included in the decree by King Jan III Sobieski in 1676; AmPoz, D 737, Archiwum Państwowe in Poznań. The quotes come from AmPoz, D 737, 1v. . AmPoz, D 444. . The first privilege was granted on August 11, 1559; the second on February 19, 1622; see AmPoz, D 502. . AmPoz, I 2231, 58–59, May 26, 1659. . Ibid., D 444, 2r. . Ibid., D 737.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 8 – 1 2 1

. On September 25, 1702, AZ 11, “Karmelici,” Archiwum Archidiecezjalne in Poznań, Teka I, 4v. See also II Polonia 6, 1686–1792, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, Rome, document from April 19, 1704. . On October 7, 1702, AmPoz, I 198, 45–46. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 140. . AmPoz, D 742; I 2228, “Summariusze dokumentów dotyczących karmelitów oraz rejestr spraw spornych z miastem,” 57. . AZ 5, “Dominikanie, Księgi rozchodowe, 1723–1753,” 7v, 12r, 47v. The same price remained also in 1734. . Kurzawa and Kusztelski, Historyczne Kościoły Poznania, 111–112. . Mill Topolnik, AmPoz, I 2231, 5. On other cases, see AmPoz I, 2232, 37–38, 46–49, 57– 63, 100–105, 126–127. On p. 38 the question of trust is mentioned. . AmPoz, D 336. . Ibid., D 337 and D 498. . Ibid., D 498. A paper copy is in ibid., D 730. . Ibid., I 2233, 69, 87–89. . The grain transfer was to occur on Pentecost; days honoring St. Margaret, St. Matthew, and St. Martin; Christmas Day; Candlemas Day; and on two Sundays around Easter; AmPoz, I 2233, 326–328. For the complaint, see AmPoz, I 2233, 506–509. . Ibid., D 733. . Ibid., D 735. . Ibid., D 742. See also AmPoz, I 2228, 49–56. . II Polonia 6, 1686–1792, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, Rome, document dated April 21, 1703. . Acta Consularia in Archiwum Archidiecezjalne in Poznań (hereafter, AC) 183, 44r–v. . A fathom is a measuring unit (canna in Latin), about 2 meters long. II Polonia 6, 1686–1792, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, document “Summarium N. Primo Episcopi.” . AZ 11, “Karmelici,” “Ratione aediicandi Oratorii in Lapidea Swidwinska in Qua Anno 1399 SS Tres Hostiae ab Infidelibus Iudaeis Transfi xae sunt,” in Archiwum Archidiecezjalne w Poznaniu, Teka I, document “Praeces Fratrum Carmelitarum Posnaniae manentium Sacrae Congregationis Porrectae, Anno 1703.” . The document with signatures is in AC 183, 33v–34r. For a Polish synopsis of the text, see Kowalski, O Kościele Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu, 51. . AZ 11, “Karmelici,” Teka I, “Copia Rescripti,” 3v. . II Polonia 6, Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, document “Summarium Primo Relatione Episcopi 1704”; AZ 11 “Karmelici,” Teka I, “Copia Rescripti.” . AZ 11, “Karmelici,” Teka I, “Copia Rescripti,” 2v, 3r. . Ibid., 3v.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 2 2 – 1 2 7



. AZ 11, “Karmelici,” Teka I, “Copia Rescripti,” 3v, the wrap-up is on 4r. . Powsiński, Depozyt Ciała Y Krwie Iezusowey, “Przemowa do Czytelnika,” 5. . AZ 11, “Karmelici,” Teka I, “Copia Rescripti,” 3v. . Ibid., 4r. . Ibid. For the bishop’s justification of the decision to allow Carmelites to turn the house into a chapel, see also AC 183, 90r– 91v. . AZ 11, “Karmelici,” Teka I, “Copia Rescripti,” 4r. . Drogi Depozyt (1722). . Citing an unidentified book, Geschichte von den heiligen drei Hostien, Kanty Kowalski claimed in 1840 that they were to be led chained with knives to underline their enmity of Christianity. Kowalski, O Kościele Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu, 18–19. . Israel Halpern, ed., Pinkas Va’ad Arb’a Arazot (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1945), 28, no. 29. This was apparently not the first time the Jews sought such condemnation. A version of the letter also was inscribed in the official records in the city of Lwów, Akty Izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Kommisieiu dla Razbora Drevnikh Aktov, vol. 5 (Vilna: 1871), 230–231. . A Polish version of the agreement from 1724 can be found in Kowalski, O Kościele Bożego Ciała w Poznaniu, 54– 62. In 1730, Protestants also were forced to attend the procession of Corpus Christi, AmPoz, I 2263, 71– 74. . Drogi Depozyt (1722), 3. . Ibid., 2.

Chapter 5: Protestant Heresy and Charges against Jews . Jan Wężyk, Constitutiones Synodorum Metropolitae Ecclesiae Gnesnensis Provincialium Authoritate Synodi Provincialis Gembicianae Per Deputator Recognitae Jussu Vero Et Opera Illustrissimi Et Reverendissimi Domini D. Joannis Wężyk Dei Et Apostolicae Sedis Gratia Archiepiscopi Gnesnensis L. N. R. P. P. Editae (Cracow: 1630; reprint, 1761), 231–232, Liber III, “De Custodia Eucharistiae, Ex Statutis Nicolai Dzierzgovii, Lovicii 1556.” See also Hanna Węgrzynek, “Was the Catholic Church in Poland Afraid of Conversion to Judaism in the Early 16th Century?” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, 213 no. 1 (2005): 9. . On Pope Paul IV and the Jews, see Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, 1555–1593 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977). . Quote from a 1538 document in Archivio Segreto Vaticano (hereafter, ASV), Arch. Consist. Acta Miscell. 18, f. 303v, quoted in Lorenzo Tacchella, Il Processo agli Eretici Veronesi nel 1550: S. Ignazio di Loyola e Luigi Lippomano (Carteggio) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1979), 11 n15. . Henryk Damian Wojtyska, ed., Aloisius Lippomano (1555–1557), vol. 3/1, Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae (Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum Romae, 1993), 5– 6;

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 2 7 – 1 3 1

Tacchella, Il Processo, 10–11, especially n. 12, also 30. On Lippomano, see also Giuseppe Alberigo, I Vescovi Italiani al Concilio di Trento (1545–1547) (Firenze: G. C. Sansoni, 1959), especially 73– 76, 85–89. . Tacchella, Il Processo, 10, 29–30. More recently on Luigi Lippomano and his work in Italy, see Emily Michelson, “Luigi Lippomano, His Vicars, and the Reform of Verona from the Pulpit,” Church History 78, no. 3 (2009): 584– 605. . Tacchella, Il Processo, 12, 20. . Archivi Arcis in Archivio Segreto Vaticano (hereafter, A.A. Arm I–XVIII, vol. 6527, fol. 101, quoted in Tacchella, Il Processo, 18n23. . A.A. Arm I–XVIII, vol. 6527, fol. 91, quoted in Tacchella, Il Processo, 15. . A.A. Arm I–XVIII, vol. 6527, fol. 117, quoted in Tacchella, Il Processo, 16 n21. . Tacchella, Il Processo, 37–38. . Luigi Lippomano, Confirmatione et Stabilimento di Tutti i Dogmi Catholici, con la Subuersione di Tutti i Fondamenti, Motiui & Ragioni De i Moderni Eretici sino al Numero. 482. Leggi Pio Lettore, Tu che Desideri di Uiuere & Morire ne la Uera & Santa Fede de gli Antichi Padri, & Uedrai che Simile Opera non Ti è Piu Capitata a le Mani, Ne Laquale Si Ha Abondantementa La Confutatione di Tutto Il Luteranesimo (Venice: Per Domenico Zio, 1553), “Preface.” . Tacchella, Il Processo, letter quoted on 32. . Ibid., 94– 96, 100, especially 106. . Lippomano, Confirmatione et Stabilimento, “Preface.” . The book was republished in Venice in 1558. . Quotes and descriptions come from Lippomano, Confirmatione et Stabilimento, final parts of the “Preface,” n.p. Part 3 on the Eucharist is on 475–537. . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, Letter of Pope Julius III to Luigi Lippomano on 3–4, no. 1. . Ibid., Letter of Giovanni Carafa, the nephew and a close advisor of Pope Paul IV to Lippomano dated July 2, 1555, on 7–8, no. 4; see also July 5 instruction for Germany on 10–11, no. 17. . Ibid., Lippomano’s letter to Giovanni Carafa sent from Innsbruck on July 22, 1555, on 21–22, no. 18. . Ibid., 22. . Ibid., 27–29, no. 22, and 53–55, no. 40. . Ibid., Lippomano’s letter to Cardinal Carolo Carafa, Augburg, August 3, 1555, on 27–29, no. 22; see also a letter dated August 31 on 48–51, no. 38. . Ibid., 49. . Ibid., Letter to Cardinal Carolo Carafa, October 9, 1555, on 56– 64, no. 42, description of the journey on 57–58. . Ibid., 61. . Ibid., Salmeron’s letter to Ignacio de Loyola, October 10, 1555, on 65–67, no. 44. . Ibid., 66.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 1 – 1 3 2

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. Ibid., Lippomano’s letter to Carolo Carafa from Wilno, October 31, 1555, on 70– 74, no. 48, the anecdote is on 73. . Luigi Lippomano and Antonio Blado, Octauus Tomus Vitarum Sanctorum Priscorum Patrum (Romae: Apud Antonium Bladum impressorem cam., 1560); Luigi Lippomano, Espositioni Uolgare del Reueren. M. Luigi Lippomano, Uescouo di Modone et Coadiutore di Bergamo: Sopra il Simbolo Apostolico Cioe il Credo, Sopra il Pater Nostro & Sopra i Dua Precetti della Charita, nelle Quali Tre Cose Consiste Cio Che Si dee dal Bon Christiano Credere, Desiderare, & Operare in Questo Mondo: Opera Catholica & Vtilissima ad Ogni Christiano (Venetiis: Apud Hieronymum Scotum, 1541). . See, for example, Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Henry Arthur Francis Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Michele Luzzati and Albano Biondi, L’inquisizione e gli Ebrei in Italia (Roma: Laterza, 1994); Lu Ann Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2006); Georgina Dopico Black, Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early Modern Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Brian S. Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997). . ASV Archivi Arcis (hereafter, ASV A.A.) 4351, 4352; ASV Fondo Borghese I 825–827. . See, for example, Księgi grodzkie Płockie (wieczyste), vol. 25, fols. 437v–438; vol. 26, fol. 10–11v; and vol. 27, fols. 57v– 60r. Also, Księga grodzka-Kowal, vol. 3 (1556– 1558), fols. 62v– 63v, 68v– 69, and 180v–181 in Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych in Warsaw (AGAD). See also the discussion of the trial by Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda” Żydów: Procesy o Rzekome Mordy Rytualne w Dawnej Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Fundacji Historia pro Futuro, 1995), 34–46. . ASV A.A. 4352, 3v. For the mention of the language of confessions and their interpretation/translation, see 7v. . On this, see Christine Mittlmeier, Publizistik Im Dienste Antijüdischer Polemik: Spätmittelalterliche Und Frühneuzeitliche Flugschriften Und Flugblätter Zu Hostienschändungen (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2000); Mitchell B. Merback, “Fount of Mercy, City of Blood: Cultic Anti-Judaism and the Pulkau Passion Altarpiece,” Art Bulletin 87, no. 4 (2005): 598–599; Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), chap. 3.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 2 – 1 3 4

. For the discussion of visual representations of the crucifi xion in northern Europe, see Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). . Rubin, Gentile Tales, especially chaps. 3, 4, and 6. See also, Kenneth R. Stow, Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters: Continuity in the Catholic-Jewish Encounter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). . The summary is ASV A.A. 4352, 2r-3v. For the description of Dorota, see also 5r. . The canon law conceded that Christians could serve Jews up to one year. . Ibid., 3v, 4v– 6v. . Ibid., 7v, 8v– 9r. . Ibid., 9v: “Item confessa est se suscepisse ex Jacobo filio eiusdem Bieszko quae tribus diebus supervixit deinde mortua non baptizata in cimiterio Judaeorum est spulta, seque longo tempore clandestine seruata ab eis fuisse usque ad procreationem ipsius prolis.” For the confusion about the child's gender, see below and fol. 14r, 18v. cf. Hanna Węgrzynek argues it was a boy, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 38. Perhaps it was the gender of the child that prevented the investigators from conflating host desecration and the miraculous blood flow with a child murder, as it was sometimes done in the Holy Roman Empire to the west, or later in Poland as well. On the conflation, see, e.g., R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). And, more recently, Stow, Jewish Dogs. . ASV A.A. 4352, 9r. The motif of a Christian woman receiving a dress in exchange for the hosts is a common trope in host desecration narratives. See, e.g., Rubin, Gentile Tales, 133, 164. . ASV A.A. 4352, 9r. Taking the Eucharist without confession was considered sacrilegious by the Church, regardless of a claim of “host desecration.” See, for example, numerous reports by Jesuits to Rome, in Acta Polonia in Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter, ARSI, Pol.), 50–54, and Chapter 3 of this book. . ASV A.A. 4352, 9r. The secondary sources seem to provide different names for this town. Łaźniki appears in the text; it is about 19 km (or 12 miles) from Łowicz, in a fairly straight line about 25–30 km (or 15–18 miles) from Sochaczew, and about 40 km by today’s major roads via Łowicz. The village of Łążek also has been suggested. It is also possible that the village no longer exists. . ASV A.A. 4352, 9r–v. . Ibid., 9v. Dogs were frequently included in the iconographic representation of host desecration or ritual murder cases. On dogs as a symbol in host desecration narratives, see Stow, Jewish Dogs. For iconographic examples of dogs in such contexts, see Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 27, 28. See also the iconography of the Poznań legend in Chapter 4 of this book. . ASV A.A. 4352, 10r.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 4 – 1 3 5



. For the list of jurors present during Dorota’s testimony, see ASV A.A. 4352, 8v. For that of jurors present during Bieszko’s testimony, see ibid., 10r. . Ibid., 10v, 11r. Hanna Węgrzynek argued that the color mentioned here had a symbolic meaning, signifying “the purple coat with which Christ was wrapped when he was led to Golgotha, as well as his clothes for which the Roman soldiers threw dice,” Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 43. . ASV A.A. 4352, 10v. . Ibid. On the use of “glass vessels” in Freiburg in 1504, see Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 96. Israel Yuval has noted that there was “an Ashkenazi custom to spill drops of wine from the glass at mention of each of the ten plagues of Egypt, alluding to messianic vengeance.” It was perhaps this custom that was mentioned, and misunderstood, during the trial. Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 100. . ASV A.A. 4352, 10v. . Ibid. On the blood of circumcision, see David Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 16, 71, 95–100. On the medieval beliefs surrounding blood, see also Bettina Bildhauer, Medieval Blood (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006). . See, for instance, the Benedictine monastery’s relic of the “Most Precious Blood of Christ” in Weingarten, Germany; the Basilica of Sant’ Andrea in Mantua; or the “soil on which the Most Precious Blood of Christ fell from the Cross” in Częstochowa, Poland, http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/english _pdf/ Weingarten2.pdf, accessed March 24, 2008. . ASV A.A. 4352, 11r. . See on this, Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów”; Cecil Roth, The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew (London: Woburn Press, 1935); Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” Polin 10 (1997); Waldemar Kowalski, “W Obronie Wiary: Ks. Stefan Żuchowski— Między Wzniosłością a Okrucieństwem,” in Żydzi Wsród Chrześcijan w Dobie Szlacheckiej Rzeczypospolitej (Kielce: Akademia Świętokrzyska, 1996); Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder; Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, CT: Yeshiva University Library and Yale University Press, 1992); Jacek Wijaczka, “Procesy o Mordy Rytualne W Polsce: Na Marginesie Książki Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” Studia Historyczne 41, no. 1 (1998); I. D. Kuzmin, Materialy k Voprosu ob Obvineniakh Evreev v Ritualnykh Prestupleniakh (St. Petersburg, 1913). . ASV A.A. 4352, 19r–v, 22r–23v. . A.A. 4351. For Bieszko’s execution, see ASV A.A. 4352, 11r. . On that connection more broadly among some Catholic writers, see Stow, Jewish Dogs. . ASV A.A. 4352, 21r.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 6 – 1 3 7

. Ibid. I thank Jeannette Hopkins for pressing me on the “turnips,” and Kenneth Stow and Federica Francesconi for discussing this passage with me. . ASV A.A. 4352, 21v. I thank Tim Rood from Oxford for helping to decipher this passage. . Ibid., 22r. . Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 35. . In 1564 and 1566, Itzhak Brodawka was implicated in two ritual murder trials, in Narew and Rososz, respectively. Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 29 and n. 65. See also Chapter 8 of this book. . ASV A.A. 4352, 22v. . On this, see Biale, Blood and Belief, 98–100. In the seventeenth century, Johannes Buxtorf described the circumcision ceremony in the chapter on childbirth and circumcision in his polemical, though not necessarily inaccurate, Synagogua Judaica: “When the sponsor is holding the baby on his lap, the Mohel unwraps the baby, takes hold of his member, and grasps it in front at the foreskin, squeezes the glands behind, rubs the foreskin to make it less sensitive so the child will feel the knife less, takes the circumcision-knife from the boy standing beside him and says aloud: Praise to you, O Lord, who have blessed us with your commandments and given us the covenant of circumcision. While he says that he cuts off a piece of the foreskin, so that a small part of the head is exposed. He quickly throws the piece of foreskin in the little bowl with sand (now the boy takes back the circumcision-knife) reaches for the cup of wine, takes a mouthful, sprays the child with it, cleans the blood away, sprays some on the face in case of weakness, takes after that the child’s member in his mouth and sucks out the blood and ejects it into the wine-cup or into the bowl with sand. He repeats this at least three times. In Hebrew it is called Mezizah, which Moses did not command, but was ordered by the Rabbonim or wise Jews. After that, when the bleeding has slowed, the Mohel grasps with his sharp pointed thumb nails the cut foreskin on the child’s genital, rips it apart, and strips it back so that the head is totally uncovered. They call this Priah, uncovering, and it is more painful to the child than the circumcision itself. He reaches for the gauze in oil, dresses the wound with three or four layers, and then covers the baby up again. Now the father of the child begins to say: Praise to you God our Lord, King of the world, who have blessed us with your commandments, and commanded us to enter the covenant of Abraham our Father. Then the entire congregation answers and says: Just as this child has entered into the covenant of Abraham our Father, so may he also enter into the Law of Moses, marriage, and good deeds. After that the Mohel washes his mouth and hands thoroughly. Then the sponsor rises with the child, and stands opposite the Mohel, who takes the second cup of red wine, says a prayer over it and over the child too: O our God, and God of our fathers, strengthen and keep

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 7 – 1 4 0



this child for his father and mother, and his name shall be known among the people of Israel (now he gives the child his name) Isaac son of Abraham. Prov. 23.25: Rejoice, father, in him who came forth from your loins, rejoice, mother, in him who came forth from your body, as it is written: let your father and mother rejoice that they have born you. The prophet says too Ezek. 16.6: I passed you and I saw you lying in your blood and I said to you: In your blood you shall live, yea I said to you, when you were lying in your blood, you shall live. With that he dips his finger in the cup with wine which he had previously used to spit the blood in, and he smears it three times on the child’s lips so that it should live longer in the blood of his circumcision.” Johannes Buxtorf, Synagoga Judaica (Juden-schül), newly translated and annotated by Alan D. Corré, chap. 2, available at http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/buxdorf/chp2 .html, accessed January 23, 2009. . ASV A.A. 4352, 23r. No rituals for girls are known. Even Buxtorff stated that when girls were born “no great fuss is made about it.” Buxtorff, Synagoga Judaica, chap. 2. . ASV A.A. 4352, 72v; also in Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 422–423, A424. . ASV A.A. 4352, 8r; also in Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 413–414, A422. . ASV A.A. 4252, 11r. . ASV A.A. 4352, 11v–12v. . I thank my colleague, Steve Kaplan of Hebrew University, for noting this. . On Jewish communities organizing resources to appeal in cases of antiJewish libels in the seventeenth century, see, for example, Simon Dubnow, ed., Pinkas Ha-Medinah: O Pinkas Va’ad Ha-Kehilot Ha-Rashiyot Bi-Medinat Lita, Kovets Takkanot U-Fesakim Mi- Shenat 383 ’Ad Shenat 521 (Berlin: ’Ayanot, 1925), takkanot: 1673, 1725 from 1676. . ASV A.A. 4352, 14r. Lippomano mentioned this letter himself. . Ibid. . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 290. The breve was sent on May 12, 1540, and concerns only accusations of ritual murder. Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents 1539–1545 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988–1990), vol. 5, 2174–2175. . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 290. . Ibid., 293. . Ibid. . See, for example, ASV A.A. 4352, 17r–17v, 19v. . Ibid., 15v, 16r. . Ibid., 12v–13r. . Ibid., 17v. . Ibid., 18r, also 19v. . Ibid., 12v.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 0 – 1 45

. Ibid., 15v. . Ibid., 16r. . Ibid., 16r–v. Miracle books of the Church of Mary of Częstochowa include a number of stories of women being freed from the devil’s posession there. Henryk Kowalewicz, Monika Kowalewiczowa, and Zofia Rozanow, Najstarsze Historie O Częstochowskim Obrazie Panny Maryi: XV i XVI Wiek (Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax, 1983), 216. See also Chapter 4 of this book. . ASV A.A. 4352, 16v. . Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 43–44. . The trial documents were published in Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 367–408. . Ibid., 62. . Ibid., 73. . Ibid., 99–100, no. 160. . Ibid., 77, no. 50. . Ibid., 120, no. 168. . Ibid. . Ibid., 80, no. 52; and 120, no. 168. Similar concerns about heresy in Poland were still voiced in 1566 and 1578 by Jesuits writing about the situation in Poland. See, for example, a letter from March 26, 1566, in which the writer complained about the “heretics” speaking badly about Catholics, and about the fact that there were few good clergy who could preach and teach in Poland; ARSI (Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu), Pol. 50, fol. 07v. See also in the same place (separate pagination, 1–42) a “Historia Societatis Jesu in Polonia ad annum 1578, in qua plura praesertin de Collegio Posnaniensis (1571–1579),” in which the writer wrote about the large numbers of Calvinists and Lutherans, while on fol. 5 of the report, a reader noted on the margins Posnania haeresibus occupata (Poznań is occupied by heretics). On Poznań during the Reformation, see also Chapter 4 of this book. . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 96– 97. . Ibid., 101–109, no. 162. . Ibid., 369, 371. . Ibid., 371. . Ibid., 374. . Ibid., 375–376. . Ibid., 379. . Ibid., 390. . Ibid., see also 383. . Ibid., 380, 382, see also 397. . Ibid., 212. . In a conversation Carla Mazzio and I had at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, 2007–2008.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 45 – 1 4 8



. See the testimonies of Gabriel the Dominican, Jacob Paczyński, and Andrzej Duchnicki, the same men who testified in the investigation of Bishop Drohojowski. Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 402–404. . Ibid., 405 and 406. . Henryk Damian Wojtyska, Papiestwo— Polska 1548–1563: Dyplomacja (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 1977), 76. . Studies on other countries during the early modern period, especially England, have shown that rumors, gossip, and news were exchanged on roads, in marketplaces, and inns. On this, see Ian Atherton, “ ‘The Itch Grown a Disease’: Manuscript Transmission of News in the Seventeenth Century,” Prose Studies 21, no. 2 (1998); Ethan H. Shagan, “Print, Orality, and Communications in the Maid of Kent Affair,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 1 (2001); Adam Fox, “Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England,” Historical Journal 40, no. 3 (1997). . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 82, no. 52. . “Auditur etiam legatus Papae venisse ad Regiam Maiestatem. De cuius eruditione hic multa homines efferent, et dicunt virum doctum. . . . Vestra dominatio, ut intelligo, hunc episcopum bene novit, qui missus est in legatione. Quid de ipso nobis sperandum sit mihi exarare digetur.” From Capitulum ex litteris nobilissimi viri, scriptis ex Posnania ad Priorem Vilnensem, die XV Novembris 1555, copy by Lippomano’s scribe in Biblioteca Vaticana Barb. Lat. 6507, fol. 18r, in Wojtyska, Papiestwo— Polska 1548–1563: Dyplomacja, 68 n104. . See his role in the Verona trials and his long chapter on the Eucharist in Lippomano, Confirmatione et Stabilimento. The chapter indeed has a tone of frustration; see, for example, 497v. While the book has a very strict structure—presentation of a doctrine, “objections by heretics,” and refutation of objections—his arguments against “heretics” in the chapter on the Eucharist appear rather circular, hammering the “real presence” against “heretical objections.” The chapter leads up to the affi rmation of clerical authority, for example, 514r–515v, 533r. . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 215. . Ibid., 216. . Ibid., 225. . Ibid., 276–277. . Ibid., 293. . Salo Wittmayer Baron, Poland-Lithuania 1500–1650: A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 16 (New York: Columbia University Press and Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976), 115, 238. And perhaps it is because of this high-profile visitor from Brześć and the prominence of Itzhak Brodawka that the Jews interrogated under torture implicated other Jews from Brześć, including Brodawka himself. . Broadsheets from Germany reported the appearance of comets in March. One was published in Nurnberg by Herman Gall about the appearance of a comet



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 8 – 15 1

and “two earthquakes in Rossanna and Constantinople on March 5, 1556,” Ein erschrocklich wunderszeichen von zweyen Erdbidemen welche geschehen seind zu Rossanna und Constantonopel; see a reproduction in Walter L. Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1550–1600: A Pictorial Catalogue (New York: Abaris Books, 1975), vol.1, 232. The other was also published in Nurnberg but by Hans Weigel the Elder about the appearance of a comet in Nurnberg in March 1556; see Strauss, The German SingleLeaf Woodcut, 1550–1600, vol. 3, 1115. . “Rocznik Świętokrzyski,” in Monumenta Poloniae Historica. Pomniki Dziejowe Polski, ed. August Bielowski (Lwów [Warsaw]: Akademia Umiejętności [PWN], 1878 [1961]), 116. On comets and popular beliefs in the early modern period, see Sara Schechner, Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), especially Part 1. . “Rocznik Świętokrzyski,” 116. . Ibid., 117. . Ibid. . Ibid. On the connection between host desecration and ritual murder accusations, see Stow, Jewish Dogs. . “Rocznik Świętokrzyski,” 117. . See the Book of Esther. . See a letter from Stanisław Golański, a canon in Kalisz to the archbishop of Gniezno, E. Rykaczewski, Relacye Nuncyuszów Apostolskich i Innych Osób o Polsce od Roku 1548 do 1690 (Berlin, Poznań: Księgarnia B. Behra, E. Bock, 1864), vol. 1, 59– 60. The rumor of host desecration in Kalisz is mentioned in other places, including Lippomano’s letter of June 21, 1556, but no other sources corroborate the rumor; see Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 60. . “O Sochaczowskim wymeczonym a wypalonym na żydzie Bogu, y o fałsszywych yego cudach. Mezoboystwem a nieprawda broni Antykryst krolestwa swego, czego iego piekielny Cesarz nauczył,” in Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja: Księga Jubileuszowa: 1505–1905, ed. Ignacy Chrzanowski (Warsaw: Gebethner i Wolff, 1905), 24–27. . Chrzanowski, Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja, 24. . Ibid. . Ibid., 25. . Ibid. . Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria, Studies on the History of Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 39. . On Wilsnack, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Charles Zika, “Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany,” Past & Present 118 (1988). See also Chapter 4 of this book.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 15 1 – 15 2



. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 138. . Ibid., 88. . Luigi Lippomano, Grundtliche Und Warhaff te Anzeigung Und Erzelung Eines Newen Wunderbarlichen Mirackels Und Geschicht So Sich [ . . . ] in Dem Hochwirdigsten Sacrament Des Altars Dises 1556 Jars Im Land Und Königreich Poln Erzaigt Und Zugetragen Hat (Koenigsberg: 1556) in Biblioteka Kórnicka, PAU, Cim.Qu. 2849. . Luigi Lippomano, Nicolaus Radziwiłł, and Pier Paolo Vergerio, Duae Epistolae Altera Aloisii Lipomani Veneti, Episcopi Veronae, Rom: Ponticicis in Polonia Legati, Ad Illustrissimum Principem D. Nicolaum Radiuillum Palatinum Villnensesm Etc. Altera Vero Eiusdem Illustrissimi D. Radiuili Ed Episcopum Et Legatum Illum (Regiomonti [Koenigsberg]: Ioannes Daubmannus, 1556). An English version of Lippomano’s letters, used against the Tudor Catholic rulers, was published in 1556, apparently as a translation “from the Italyan [sic] language.” See, Luigi Lippomano and Michael Throckmorton, A Copye of a Verye Fyne and Vvytty Letter Sent from the Ryght Reuerende Levves Lippomanus by Shop of Verona in Italy, and Late Legate in Polone, from the Moste Holy and Blessed Father Pope Paule the Fourth, and from His Moste Holy Sea of Rome (Rome: Curtigiane of Rome, 1556). The polemical aspect of the English publication is obvious from the start—it could not have escaped the reader that the publisher was Curtigiane of Rome (the courtesans of Rome). A German version was also published in Königsberg in 1557 and a Polish version in 1559 in Brześć. The German version is available in the Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, CIM 4987. The Polish version was published by Ignacy Chrzanowski in Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja. . Pier Paolo Vergerio (1498–1565) was a bishop of Capodistria. In the 1530s, he was a papal secretary and a papal nuncio to Vienna. In 1546 he was tried and convicted of heresy, and in 1549 he fled to Geneva. In the 1550s, he came to Poland where he was actively trying to support the Protestants. His pamphlets against Lippomano are part of these efforts. On Vergerio, see Raymond B. Waddington, “Pietro Aretino, Religious Writer,” Renaissance Studies 20, no. 3 (2006): 284–285; Erika Rummel and Laura Hunt, “Vergerio’s Invective against Erasmus and the Lutherans: An Autograph in the Biblioteca Marciana,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 80, no. 1 (2000); Salvatore Caporetto, “Motivi Di Riforma Religiosa E Inquisizione nel Ducato di Urbino nella Prima Meta del Cinquecento [Motives of Religious Reform and the Inquisition in the Duchy of Urbino in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century],” Annuario dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea 37 (1985); M. A. Overell, “Vergerio’s Anti-Nicodemite Propaganda and England, 1547–1558,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51, no. 2 (2000). . Lippomano, Radziwiłł, and Vergerio, Duae Epistolae, B–Bv. Also in Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 146–147. A Polish version was published in Brześć in 1559; it was republished by Ignacy Chrzanowski as “Dwa listy łacińskie Alojzego Lipomana i Mikołaja Radziwiłła, w przekładzie polskim Mikołaja Reja” in Chrzanowski, Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 15 2 – 15 5

. Wojtyska, Papiestwo— Polska 1548–1563: Dyplomacja, 88–89. . Chrzanowski, Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja, 71. . Ibid., 81; Lippomano, Radziwiłł, and Vergerio, Duae Epistolae, Eii v; Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 252. . Chrzanowski, Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja, 82; Lippomano, Radziwiłł, and Vergerio, Duae Epistolae, Eiii; Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 253. . Chrzanowski, Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja, 82; Lippomano, Radziwiłł, and Vergerio, Duae Epistolae, Eiii v; Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 253. . Chrzanowski, Z Wieku Mikołaja Reja, 71; Lippomano, Radziwiłł, and Vergerio, Duae Epistolae, a ii v– a iv v. . Lippomano, Radziwiłł, and Vergerio, Duae Epistolae, a ii v. . In her recent book Wonderful Blood, Caroline Walker Bynum has shown that Protestants, while combating Catholic “blood shrines,” often published pamphlets about them, and thus promoted them. Information about a number of such blood cults survived only because of these Protestant pamphlets. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, especially chap. 3. . A summary is available in Stanisław Grodziski, Irena Dwornicka, and Wacław Uruszczak, Volumina Constitutionum 1550–1585, vol. 2, part 1 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2005), 66– 71. The reports from the 1555 Sejm also confirm such efforts; see, for example, Tadeusz Lubomirski, ed., Dzienniki Sejmów Walnych Koronnych Za Panowania Zygmunta Augusta, Króla Polskiego, W. X. Litewskiego, 1555 i 1558 R. w Piotrkowie Złożonych (Cracow: W Drukarni Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 1869), 16– 17. News about this reached Strassburg, where a newsletter was printed, Neuwe Zeyttung und warhaff te Bekantnusz des christlichen Glaubens auf dem Landtag zu Piotrków, den dritten Tag Maij anno M.D.LV in Biblioteka Zakład Narodowy Ossolińskich, XVI Qu. 3156. . Lubomirski, Dzienniki Sejmów 1555 i 1558, 18. . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 207, 208. . Ibid., 293. . Ibid. Increasingly in the early modern period, court records were used in polemic as evidence supporting whatever claims the polemicists may have been arguing. Lippomano apparently published the excerpts from the trial, and later there were pamphlets printed after other affairs. See, for example, Jan Achacy Kmita, Process Sprawy Bochenskiej z Zydami o Nayswietszey Eucharistiey Sakrament of Zydow u Świętokradców Kupiony y Cudownie Okazany (n.p.: after 1606). Caroline Bynum argued, after Heiko Oberman, that “the rise of legal process transformed legends and lynchings into evidence and judicial murder; the onset of “modernity” changed methods, not beliefs,” Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 68. . Wojtyska, Aloisius Lippomano, 293. . Ibid., 203–216.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 15 5 – 15 8



. Ibid., 206. . Ibid., 208. . Ibid., 210. . Ibid. . On Osiander, see Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 136–143. See also Joy Kammerling, “Andreas Ossiander, the Jews, and Judaism,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth- Century Germany, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006). . See, for example, documents concerning Dominicans in Sochaczew preserved in the Archiwum Archidiecezjalne in Poznań. AZ 5/19, “Liber Consiliorum Conventus Sochacoviensi Ordinis Praedicatorum” notes various donations and disastrous fires. It skips over 1556, discussing 1504, 1572, and then 1602. It discusses fires in a couple of places, including one in 1733. The fire in 1733 apparently started and devastated Jewish homes directly bordering the property of the Dominicans, whose church had not yet been rebuilt after an earlier disastrous fire in 1703, also coming from the neighboring homes. In the agreement reached between the Dominicans and the local Jews, mediated by the bishop of Poznań himself, who had been summoned by the Jews, the houses were to be rebuilt at least eighteen feet from the fence surrounding Dominicans’ property. AZ 5/19 in Archiwum Archidiecezjalne in Poznań, 79–80.

Chapter 6: Christians on Trial, Jews Expelled . Jan Achacy Kmita, Ein Send Breief [sic] Abo List od Żydow Polskich do Messyasza, Który Iako Żydzi Wierzą w Kraiu Siedzi Czekaiąc Czasu Przyścia Swego (n.p.: after 1610), B3 verso. This work has been misdated by bibliographers who, like Karol Estreicher, dated it for 1601. The text, however, mentions both the expulsion of Jews from Bochnia, which took place in 1605–1606, and from the nearby town of Uście, which took place in 1610. . Jan Achacy Kmita, Process Sprawy Bochenskie z Zydami o Naświętszey Eucharystiey Sakrament od Zydow y Świętokradców Kupiony y Cudownie Okazany (n.p.: after 1606). Similarly, this pamphlet has been misdated to 1602, according to the frontispiece, but the text discussed the expulsion and contains a 1605 royal decree. It is possible, as Estreicher seems to have believed, that there were other versions printed soon after the trial. Karol Josef Teofil Estreicher, Bibliografia Polska, Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego Krakowskiego Staraniem Komisji Bibliograficznej ed. (Cracow: Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, 1870–1955), vol. 19, 324–328. . See Chapters 3 and 8 of this book. . See Chapter 7 of this book. . Akta Staropolskie Bochni (hereafter, ASB) 52, “Acta Scabinalia,” in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Oddział w Bochni), 48–50. The Bochnia trial has been

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 15 8 – 1 6 0

discussed in Stanisław Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni (Bochnia: Druk W. Hillenbranda, 1928); Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda” Żydów: Procesy o Rzekome Mordy Rytualne w Dawnej Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Fundacji Historia pro Futuro, 1995), 68– 74, especially 71– 74. . ASB 52, 48. . Ibid. A skilled mason or a carpenter could make about 6–8 groszy per day; a gallon of mead cost around 8 groszy; a pound of sugar 15, and a cart of firewood about 11–12. For charts of prices, see Władysaw Adamczyk, Ceny w Warszawie w XVI i XVII Wieku (Lwów: J. Mianowskiego, 1938); Stanisław Hoszowski, Ceny we Lwowie w XVI i XVII Wieku (Lvov: Kasa im. J. Mianowskiego, 1928). . ASB 52, 48. . Ibid., 49. . ASB 24, “Acta advocatalia,” 13. The accused was apparently confused and said that it must have been on the Holy Saturday because “they do not receive communion on the Saturday before Palm Sunday.” There is no Mass and no Communion on Good Friday and Holy Saturday; after the last Mass on Maundy Thursday, the Eucharist is removed from the tabernaculum and stored away until Easter Sunday; before Easter Sunday it is given only to the dying. Dudka could not have received the Eucharist on Holy Saturday. . ASB 52, 48. On the removal of the chalice from laity, see Chapter 1 in this book and, in more detail, Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). . Stanisław Fischer, Matka Boska Bocheńska i Jej Kult na Tle Życia Religijnego w Dawnej Bochni (Bochnia: H. Hillenbrand, 1934), 97– 98. . Session XXI, chapter I of the council specifically addressed the question of the laity taking the chalice: “that laymen, and clerics when not consecrating, are not obliged, by any divine precept, to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist under both species [bread and wine]; and that neither can it by any means be doubted, without injury to faith, that communion under either species is sufficient for them unto salvation.” Canons I and II of the session condemned those promoting lay access to the chalice: “Canon I. If anyone says that, by the command of God, or, by necessity of salvation, all Christ’s faithful should receive both forms of the most holy sacrament of the eucharist; let him be anathema. Canon II. If anyone says that the holy Catholic Church was not led by proper causes and reasons to communicate under the species of bread only, laity, and even clerics when not consecrating . . . let him be anathema.” For the Latin text of the canons and the English, see Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed and Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), vol. 2, 726– 727. . ASB 52, 49. . Ibid., 50.

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. Ibid., 52–53. . Ibid., 53; the new hearing by the criminal court is registered in ASB 24, “Acta advocatalia,” 5–8. . ASB 24, 6– 7. . Ibid., 7–8. . Ibid., 12. . Ibid. On the association between Jews and dogs, or “Jewish dogs” in the context of the host abuse accusations, see Kenneth R. Stow, Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters: Continuity in the Catholic-Jewish Encounter, Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). . ASB 24, 13–14. . Ibid., 100–102. . ASB 52, 251–252, 255–256. . Ibid., 256, 281, 350, 353–354. . See, for example, ASB 23, 227–228; ASB 24, 104–344; ASB 52, 115–116, 130– 132, 311, 345, 379; ASB 53, 17–18, 229. . ASB 24, 345, 349–351. . Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni, 39. . Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, D verso. . Ibid., C2 verso–D recto. ASB 54, 93. . ASB 53, 244–248. . ASB 24, 357. . ASB 54, 93– 94. Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, C2 verso–D recto. . ASB 54, 93. . Ibid., 84–121. . Ibid., 121. . Ibid., 245–246. . Ibid., 268–269. . Ibid., 317–322, 331–337, 358–361. . ASB 24, 402–403, ASB 54, 333. . Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni, 48. . ASB 55, 19–22. . See the witness testimony, ASB 25, 57. . Ibid., 10–11. . Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni, 45–46. . ASB 25, 157–159, 235–239. . ASB 55, 341–43, 355. For further documentation of the case, see ASB 25, 48–50, 53– 64, 71– 74, 155, and as late as 1611, see 210–218. . Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni, 41. . Psalm 124/125:4. Kmita quotes the verse also in Latin and Greek. Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey. For examples of his funerary poetry, see Jan Achacy

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Kmita, Treny na Śmierć Katarzyny Branickiey Starościny Niepołomickiey (Cracow: M. Scharffenberger, 1588); Jan Achacy Kmita, Łów Dyanny (Cracow: W Drukarniey Mikołaia Scharffenbergera, 1588); Jan Achacy Kmita, Phoenix (Cracow: Wojciech Kobyliński, 1609); Jan Achacy Kmita, Silicernium na Pogrzeb Zacnie Vrodzonego Pana Pawła Czernego z Witowic y na Ich Moć Pany Powinne y Przyiacioły (Cracow: n.p., 1610); Jan Achacy Kmita, Akatergaston to Iest Utracenie Ozdoby Ciała Żywego Zacnie Vrodzonego Pana Spytka Stanisława Faliboga z Ianowic Ktory z Szedł z Tego Świata Dziesiątego Marca Roku Pańskiego 1622. Żył Lat 40 (Cracow: n.p., 1622). . It is possible that an earlier version had been published in 1602 and is now lost, but the one currently available and used by scholars and bibliographers was undoubtedly published in 1606 or afterward, despite the misleading date on the title page. See Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, for example, B2 verso. . William James Bouwsma, A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), “Introduction.” . Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów”, 69– 74. . Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 76, 80–81, 121, 130, 174–175. . Specifically on Bochnia and the Reformation, see Stanisław Fischer, Matka Boska Bocheńska i Jej Kult na Tle Życia Religijnego w Dawnej Bochni, 97– 98; Stanisław Fischer, Dzieje Bochenskiej Żupy Solnej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Geologiczne, 1962), 41–42; Feliks Kiryk and Zygmunt Ruta, eds., Bochnia: Dzieje Miasta i Regionu (Cracow: Drukarnia Narodowa,1980), 137–138. . See Jan Achacy Kmita, Ierycho Nowe w Ktorym Sie Ukazuie O Dowodzie Mesyaszowym, Przyieździe Iego na Pstrym Ole, Groźbie, Pomszczeniu Się Krzywd Żydowskich, Przyprowadzeniu Sorobora Y Lewiasan na Przyiazd Masyaszow Do Krakowa na Nowy Plac (n.p., 1615), Aii verso; Kmita, Ein Send Breief, A3. . Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, 4 (unnumbered). . Ibid., A. . Ibid., A verso. . See Chapter 1 of this book. . Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, A2. 1. Ibid., A2 verso. . Ibid., unnumbered page after A2 verso. . Ibid., unnumbered, two pages after A2 verso. . Ibid., unnumbered, two pages before B. . Later in his account, Kmita did acknowledge that Mazur died of “pain.” Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, D verso. . Ibid., unnumbered, one page preceding B. On Borzymowski, see Kiryk and Ruta, Bochnia, 121. . Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, unnumbered, and C.

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. Ibid., B–B verso, and unnumbered two pages before C. . Ibid., B verso. . Ibid., D–D verso. . Jennifer Spinks, “Wondrous Monsters: Representing Conjoined Twins in Early Sixteenth-Century German Broadsheets,” Parergon 22, no. 2 (2005): 78. On monstrous births, see also Philip M. Soergel, “Monstrous Births in Early Modern Germany,” in The Future of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Problems, Trends, and Opportunities for Research, ed. Roger Dahood (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), chaps. 2–3; Dudley Butler Wilson, Signs and Portents: Monstrous Births from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1993). . R. Po-chia Hsia, “A Time for Monsters: Monstrous Births, Propaganda, and the German Reformation,” in Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 77. . Jennifer Spinks, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth- Century Germany, Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009), chaps. 4–5. . Hsia, “A Time for Monsters,” 82–83. Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 41–42. See also Soergel, “Monstrous Births,” 138–140. . Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, unnumbered page following A2 verso, and B2. . Ibid., B2. . Ibid., C. . Jan Achacy Kmita, Zywoty Krolow Polskich (Cracow: W Drukarni M. Scharffenbergera, 1591). See also his pamphlet about Easter, Jan Achacy Kmita, Peszach Hoc Est Pascha Siue Transitus a Vitiis Ad Summos Apices Virtutem & Religionem (n.p., 1623); and his reflection on the rebellion against the monarch, Jan Achacy Kmita, O Confederaciey Lwowskiey w Roku 1622 Uczynioney Nauka Za Pozwoleniem Urzędowym Wydana: Multis Simul Criminibus Obruitur Qui Contra Patriam Peccat: Impietate, Ingratudine, Ciuium Perturbatione, Ac Matricidio (n.p., after 1622). . Kmita, Zywoty Krolow Polskich, unnumbered. . Jan Achacy Kmita, Talmud Abo Wiara Zydowska (Cracow: n.p., 1610), verso of the title page, A3 verso–A4 verso. . Ibid.; Jan Achacy Kmita, Talmud Abo Wiara Zydowska, expanded ed. (n.p.: 1622); Jan Achacy Kmita, Talmud Abo Wiara Zydowska, same as 1610 ed. (Lublin: n.p., 1642). For the 1622 edition, Kmita seems to have used Alphonso d’Espina’s Fortalitum Fidei; on B verso, he mentions “M. Alphonsus lib. De bellis Dei cap. 44.” . Kmita, Ierycho Nowe, Aiii and B2 verso. . Book of Joshua 5:13– 6:27. . Kmita, Ierycho Nowe, Aiii verso.

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. Kmita, Ein Send Breief, A3. . Kmita, Proces Sprawy Bocheńskiey, A. . Antonina Keckowa, Żupy Krakowskie w XVI–XVIII Wieku (Do 1772 Roku) (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1969), 32–35. . In 1581, Volumina Legum: Przedruk Zbioru Praw Staraniem XX. Pijarów w Warszawie Od Roku 1732 Do Roku 1782 Wydanego, 2nd ed., 10 vols. (Petersburg: Jozafat Ohryzka, 1859; reprint, 1980), vol. 2, 209, col. 1018. Kiryk and Ruta, Bochnia, 98– 99. . Kiryk and Ruta, Bochnia, 99. . Antoni Jodłowski, Dzieje Żup Krakowskich (Wieliczka: Muzeum Żup Krakowskich, 1988), 183–184. . The salt delivery rates were issued at the Sejm in 1589, Volumina Legum, vol. 2, 295, col. 1277. . Kiryk and Ruta, Bochnia, 99. . Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni, 12–13; Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów,” 70. On the role of Jews in selling alcohol and running inns in Bochnia, see also Janusz Paprota, “Karczmy Bocheńskie: Z Dziejów Gospodarki i Obyczajowości Miasta w Okresie Staropolskim,” Rocznik Bocheński 3 (1995): 133–155. On Jews in the salt trade and extraction elsewhere in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews: Poland-Lithuania 1500–1650, vol. 16 (New York: Columbia University Press and Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976), 250–252. . Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni, 13–15. . ASB 52, 176–177, 188–189, 204–205. . Fischer, Wygnanie Żydów z Bochni; Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów.”

Chapter 7: The Struggle for Power and Authority . Akta miasta Przemyśla in Archiwum Państwowe in Przemyśl (hereafter, AmPrz) 824, 9. . On Przemyśl, see Feliks Kiryk and Andrzej Koperski, eds., Dzieje Przemyśla (Przemyśl: Towarzestwo Przyjaciół Nauk w Przemyślu, 2001–2003); Jacek Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora: Żydzi i Chrześcijanie w Przemyślu w Latach 1559–1772 (Przemyśl: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk w Przemyślu, 1996); Jerzy Motylewicz, Społeczeństwo Przemyśla w XVI i XVII Wieku (Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2005). . This case was briefly described in Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 168–170; Motylewicz, Społeczeństwo Przemyśla, 81–82; Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda” Żydów: Procesy o Rzekome Mordy Rytualne w Dawnej Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Fundacji Historia pro Futuro, 1995), 79–82. The unusually rich records are preserved in the state archive in Przemyśl in AmPrz 81, 235, 824, 838. Some documents were pub-

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lished in Mojżesz Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu: Do Końca XVIII Wieku (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991 [1903]). . AmPrz 81, 155. There is much scholarship on “love magic” in early modern Europe; see, for example, the seminal Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). . AmPrz 81, 97. . AmPrz 81, 71– 75, 119–125. . Ibid., 72, 120–121. . Ibid., 73, 122. . Ibid., 73– 74, 123–124. . Ibid., 74, 124–125. . Ibid., 155–157. . Ibid., 156. . Ibid., 157. . Ibid., 158. . Ibid. . Ibid., 75. . Ibid., 92. . Ibid., 92, 107. . Ibid., 76– 77. . Ibid., 90– 91. . Ibid., 92. . Ibid., 97. . Ibid., 161. . Ibid., 96– 97. . Ibid., 98. . Ibid., 98, 150. . AmPrz 838, 4. . Ibid. This detail is also mentioned in the Jewish penitential prayer composed in the aftermath of the affair. “Megillat Selihot Asher Omrim Ba-’Ir Premisla Ba-Erev Rosh Hodesh Nisan Yom Ta’anit Le-Zekher ’Alilat Sheker Ve-Kidush Ha-Shem ’al Yadei Rabi Moshe Ha-Nizkar Le-Halan,” in Żydzi w Przemyślu: Do Końca XVIII Wieku, ed. Mojżesz Schorr (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991 [1903]). . “Megillat Selihot,” 250, 257. There is a large body of literature on this subject; see, for example, Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Robert Chazan, God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Shlomo

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Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1996); Abraham Meir Habermann, ed., Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz Ve-Tsarfat: Divre Zikhronot Mi-Bene Ha-Dorot Shebi-Tekufat Mas’e HaTselav U-Mivhar Piyutehem (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1945); Jacob Katz, “Ben Tat-Nu Le-Tah-Tat,” in Halakhah Ve-Kabalah: Mehkarim Be-Toldot Dat Yisrael Al Medoreha Ve-Zikatah Ha-Hevratit (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984); Israel Yuval, “Ha-Nakam Ve-Ha-Klalah, Ha-Dam Ve Ha-’alilah: Me-’alilot Qedushim Le-’alitot Dam,” Zion 48, no. 1 (1993); Israel Yuval, Shene Goyim Be-Vitnekh: Yehudim Ve-Notsrim Dimuyim Hadadiyim (Tel-Aviv: ’Alma ’Am ’oved, 2000); Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). . “Megillat Selihot,” 257, also 249–252. . Ibid., 256. . Ibid., 255. . Ibid. This is a reference to the repeated and illegal torture of Moszko Szmuklerz. . Ibid. . Ibid., 253. . Ibid. This was, indeed, a common belief in early modern Europe (see Chapter 6 of this book when Mazur, defiantly denying any charges, was shaved before torture). . “Megillat Selihot,” 252. . Ibid., 251–252. . Ibid., 249. . AmPrz 81, 165–169. . Ibid., 81. . AmPrz 838, 3–4. . AmPrz 81, 83, 101–102, 135–136. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 122. . AmPrz 81, 87. . On witnesses, see Bartłomiej Groicki, Porządek Sądów i Spraw Miejskich Prawa Majdeburskiego w Koronie Polskiej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Prawnicze, 1953 [1559]), 131–135. On not harming an innocent person, see Bartłomiej Groicki, Ten Postępek Wybran Iest z Praw Cesarskich Który Karolus V Cesarz Wydać po Wszystkich Swoich Państwiech, Ktorym Się Nauka Daie, Iako w Tych Sądziech a Sprawach Około Karania na Gardle abo na Zdrowiu Sędziowie y Każdy Rząd Ma Sie Zachować y Postępować Wedle Boiaźni Bożey Sprawiedliwie, Pobożnie, Roztropnie y Nieskwapliwie (Cracow: Lazarus Andreae, 1559; reprint, 1954), Preface, Articles III and IV. . AmPrz 838, 3. . Ibid. On the structure of the courts in Przemyśl and their authority over Jews, see Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 34–38.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 7 – 1 9 3

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. AmPrz 838, 4. . Ibid. See also, Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 119–121. . AmPrz 81, 127. . Ibid., 76, 78, 94, 128. On the back-and-forth, see ibid., 77–87. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 83–85. . AmPrz 81, 80 and 146 (the pagination is out of order). For the text of the law, see Volumina Legum: Przedruk Zbioru Praw Staraniem XX. Pijarów w Warszawie od Roku 1732 do Roku 1782 Wydanego, 2nd ed., 10 vols. (Petersburg: Jozafat Ohryzka, 1859; reprint, 1980), vol. I, 142, col. 132. . AmPrz 81. . He was referring to the legislation passed at the Sejm in Toruń, 1521, the so-called statutes of Toruń, Legum, vol. I, 369–370, col. 396–397. . AmPrz 81, 82. For the statute, see Volumina Legum, vol. II, 51, col. 691. . AmPrz 81, 83. . Ibid., 84, 137–140. . Ibid., 83. . Ibid., 133–134. The trope was first introduced by Paul in his Epistles, picked up in the fifth century by Augustine of Hippo, and then used in the Middle Ages by Pope Innocent III to define Jewish status in Christian lands. See Romans 9:6–13, Galatians 4:21–5:1. Augustine, City of God, book XVI, chap. 2:31. . AmPrz 81, 134–136. . Ibid., 105. . Ibid. . Ibid., 106. . Ibid., 106–107. . Ibid. It is unclear what was meant by “green books”; the word may have referred to binding only. . Ibid., 107–108. . AmPrz 838, 7. Also in Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 121, no. 151. . AmPrz 824, 1–2. . Ibid., 3–4; 838, 15. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 123–124. . AmPrz 824, 5– 6. . AmPrz 838, 21–22, and a fragment in Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 127–128. . AmPrz 838, 23. . AmPrz 824, 9. . Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 168; Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 130–133. . AmPrz 824, 29. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 252. . Volumina Legum, vol. III, 384, col. 809. . Cited in Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 22–23.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 4 – 1 9 8

. Ibid., 23. . AmPrz 826, 17–20. . AmPrz 81, 74 et al. . AmPrz 833, “Extrakty i kopie akt grodzkich przemyskich. Procesy władyki A. Krupeckiego z magistratem miasta Przemyśla, 1615–1616, 1629, 1646”; AmPrz 840. . AmPrz 770, 43–44. . AmPrz 50, 46–48. . See, e.g., AmPrz 50, 220–221. . The document is published in Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 73– 75. By 1419, their community was big enough that sources refer to the “Jewish street.” Kiryk and Koperski, Dzieje Przemyśla, 2/1,87; Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 47. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 74. . Ibid., 78. . “Yesh reshut liknot batim min ’aralim,” ibid., 83. . Ibid., 75– 76. . Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 162; Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 8. . Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 68– 71; Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 78–80. An impressive stone synagogue was finally built in 1595, a building that remained standing until it was demolished following World War II. . Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 51–52, 54, 67. . Quoted in ibid., 52. . AmPrz 579, 13–14. In 1757, the city explicitly stated that Jews could buy any property within the city as long as they did not sell it to nobles or the clergy; Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, chap. 5. . AmPrz 590, 5. The burghers’ complaint happened in 1568, a mere eight years after the privilege granted to Jews by the king. . In 1571, Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 80–81. . Ibid., 95. . AmPrz 590, 45. In 1602, Jews once more came to court to reiterate their trade privileges, Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 98– 99. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 105–106. . On April 12, 1608; ibid., 106. . AmPrz 590, 49–50. . This process is discussed in detail in Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, chap. 5. Some documents, including the 1645 agreement, were published in Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 14–152. For additional documents illustrating these mutual complaints, see AmPrz 590. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 147–152. . Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 113–115; Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 157, 165. . Similar cooperation in civic matters often forced Protestants and Catholics to cooperate in the Holy Roman Empire after the Reformation.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 8 – 2 0 4

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. In 1576 and 1595, Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 112; Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 85–86, 96– 98. Six hundred złotys was a relatively large amount, considering that a horse could be bought at the time for 24 złotys, an annual salary of a city notary was about 80–104 złotys, and a teacher earned 4 złotys a year. For prices in nearby Lwów, see Stanisław Hoszowski, Ceny we Lwowie w XVI i XVII Wieku (Lwów: Kasa im. J. Mianowskiego, 1928), 198, 215, tables 36 and 48. . Schorr, Żydzi w Przemyślu, 96– 97. . In 1618, AmPrz 590, 63– 64. . Ibid., 69– 72. See a brief discussion in Krochmal, Krzyż i Menora, 68. . For more detail on this, see Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Magda Teter, “ ‘There Should Be No Love between Us and Them’ ”in Early Modern Poland: Borders and Boundaries, eds. Adam Teller and Magda Teter (Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010).

Chapter 8: Justice and the Politics of Crime . See Chapters 5, 6, and 7 in this book. . See, for example, Israel Halpern, ed., Pinkas Va’ad Arb’a Arazot (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik,1945), 31, no. 172. See also, e.g., the mention of expenses for a mission to Rome to obtain a papal letter against blood libels in ibid., 72. . Akta miasta Lublina in Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin (hereafter, AmL) 141, 266r–270v. . Ibid., 267r–268r. . Ibid., 268r–v. . See Chapter 7 in this book, and Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda” Żydów: Procesy O Rzekome Mordy Rytualne w Dawnej Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Fundacji Historia pro Futuro, 1995), 68– 74. On confession, see Chapter 2 in this book. . AmL 141, 269r–v. . Ibid., 269v. . On this case, see Chapter 6 in this book. . AmL 141, 270r–v. . Wacław Uruszczak and Irena Dwornicka, eds., Acta Maleficorum Wisniciae: Księga Złoczynców Sądu Kryminalnego w Wiśniczu (1629–1665) (Cracow: Collegium Columbinum, 2003), 76–81. . Ibid., 77– 78. . Ibid., 78. . Ibid., 79–81. . Ibid., 80–81. See also Chapter 4 in this book for similar rhetoric in Poznań and other places, which became sites of eucharistic cults. . Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 81.



n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 5 – 2 0 7

. Akta m. Wiśnicza, (hereafter, DEP 16) “Acta advocatalia et scabinorum oppidi Visnicz 1634–1680,” Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Wawel), 212–224. The quote is from 214. . Ibid., 217. . Szczęsna was the wife of a local blacksmith; her length of ser vice exceeded the one year allowed by the Church. . Ibid., 218–224. . Ibid., 328–332, 375–376. . R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 34. The trial in Wiśnicz resembles the trial of Przemyśl, except that the gender roles are reversed and the outcome different. . Akty Izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Kommisieiu Dla Razbora Drevnikh Aktov (hereafter, AIVK ), vol. 5 (Vilna: Tipografia Gubernskago Pravlenia, 1871), 4– 6. The town is referred to as Wojnia in the text, but Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego (Warsaw: 1977 [1893]), vol. 13 does not list such a town in the Brest region. The only towns with names related to that in the area are Wojnicz and Wojnówka, a small village. S. A. Bershadskii claims that there were only two Jewish home owners in Wojnia or Wojnicz in 1566, yet he also gives names of two Jewish butchers in town, one of whom was a woman. It is unlikely that there would be two Jewish butchers with virtually no Jewish families. Either there were more Jews settled by 1566 who were simply not home owners, or there is a mistake in his assumption that these two butchers were kosher butchers. S. A. Bershadski, Dokumenty i regesty k istorii litovskikh evreev (St. Petersburg: A. E. Landau, 1882), vol. 2, 155–156. Without explanation of the different possibilities, Hanna Węgrzynek identifies this town as Wohyn. Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna legenda” Żydów, 101, 186. . AIVK, vol. 5, 4–5. On the use of royal or papal privileges for protection, see also Modekhai Nadav, “Ma’aseh Alimut Ha-Dadiyyim Bein Yehudim Le-LoYehudim Be-Lita Lifney 1648,” Gal-Ed 7–8 (1985): 3. . AIVK, vol. 5, 5– 6. . I use the term “Orthodox Christianity,” “Orthodox Church,” or “Eastern Christianity” to refer to non-Catholic Christianity of the Eastern rite. There were Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Uniate (Greek Catholic) Churches in the eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But the sources often do not specify which denomination they refer to. In this case the church is referred to as “a Ruthenian church.” The issue of Christian servants in Jewish homes has been a subject of Church legislation for centuries. For a discussion of this issue within Polish context, see Judith Kalik, “Christian Servants Employed by Jews in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Polin:

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 7 – 2 1 0

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Studies in Polish Jewry 14 (2001); Adam Kaźmierczyk, “The Problem of Christian Servants as Reflected in the Legal Codes of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century and in the Saxon Period,” GalEd 15–16 (1997); Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chap. 4. On tension between local burghers and Jews due to competition, see, for example, Gershon David Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatów in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 46– 68. . Akty Izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Kommisieiu Dla Razbora Drevnikh Aktov: Akty O Evreiakh, vol. 28 (Vilna: Tipografia A. G. Syrkina, 1901), 392–395. The case was also discussed in Nadav, “Ma’aseh Alimut.” . AIVK: Akty O Evreiakh, 393. . Ibid., 393–394. . Ibid. . Ibid. . Court narratives were consciously constructed. On a narrative as a moral tale, see Heyden White, The Context of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 21–24. See also Heyden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, ed. Heyden White (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), especially 83. For a discussion on the role of narrative in understanding events, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth- Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 133–134. . Kenneth R. Stow has written about this connection between host desecration and ritual murder in his Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters: Continuity in the Catholic-Jewish Encounter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). . On this, see most recently her important, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). . In 1672, the Orthodox Council in Jerusalem used the term “transubstantiate” to describe the transformation, Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1964), 286–295. . Hugh Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 109–110, 135–136, 154. . Ernst Benz, The Eastern Orthodox Church: Its Thought and Life, Anchor (Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2009), 37–38.

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 1 1 – 2 1 3

. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), 204–205; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, 157–158. . More broadly about these trials, see Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, Procesy o Mordy Rytualne w Polsce w XVI–XVIII Wieku (Kielce: DCF, 1995); Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500– 1800,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 10 (1997); Węgrzynek, “Czarna Legenda Żydów.” . “Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” AGAD Księgi miejskie krzemienieckie, nabytki nie-dokumentowe, Oddziału I, no. 58, title page verso: O sendzią sprawiedliwy Tys Boze Dobrotliwy Roskasz Żydów za krew sądzie Nieday falszywię w tym błądzic Dziś za krew chrześcianskie twoie swięte Za Dekretem bętą czterech Żydów scięte Bo sędzia fałszywy a niesprawiedliwy Duszy swey wiecznie zdradliwy Bo kto Zydow za tą Życie daruie Ten sobię Piekło wieczneg gotuie Nawróc go Boże do krwi swey swiętey Aby y sędzia taki niebył zato scięty Amen tym Pieczetuie y Konkluduie Ja Typowski Bogu Duszę gotuię. . “Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” 3–27. The document was published in Anna Michałowska, “Protokół Procesu o Mord Rytualny: Fragment Czarnej Księgi Krzemienieckiej z 1747 Roku,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, 175–178, no. 3 (1995): 107–120. . “Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” 4. Akta 20. Sanguszków, Teka 5/27, 3; Michałowska, “Protokół Procesu,” 110. . “Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” 5. Akta 20. Sanguszków, Teka 5/27, 4; Michałowska, “Protokół Procesu,” 110. See a similar motif in 1271, Pfortzheim, in which Jews were accused of killing a seven-year-old girl. Also in Würzburg, 1569–1570, Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 202. In another case, a body began to sweat in the presence of a murderer, Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 128. . “Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” 5. Akta 20. Sanguszków, Teka 5/27, 4; Michałowska, “Protokół Procesu,” 110. . “Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” 26–27. Michałowska, “Protokół Procesu,” 120. . Four are mentioned in the poem at the start of the record book by Jan Tysowski, and in another summary of the trial found in the Kiev archives and pub-

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 1 3 – 2 15



lished in I. Galant, “Zhertvy Ritualnogo Obvinenya ve Zaslave v 1747 G: Po Aktam Kievskago Tsentralnago Arkhiva,” Evreiskaia starina 4, no. 2 (1912): 202–218. A Jewish penitential prayer composed soon after the trial notes that there were five executed Jews. . Published in Hebrew in Galant, “Zhertvy,” 217. . “Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” 27. Michałowska, “Protokół Procesu,” 120. . Akta 20. Sanguszków, Teka 5/27, 1–30. . Jan Tysowski, Dekret na Zydow Mordercow y Zaboycow Pewnego Katolika. Działo Się to na Zamku Zasławskim w Dobrach Dziedzicznych Jaśnie Oświeconego Xiążęcia Jmci Pawła [ . . . ] Lubartowicza Sanguszka (n.p., after April 17, 1747); Dekret w Sprawie o Zamordowanie Okrutne przez Zydow Chrześcianina Antoniego Pod Zasławiem Ferowany w Zamku Zasławskim Dnia 17 Kwietnia Roku Pańskiego 1747 (n.p., after April 17, 1747). See copies at the Biblioteka Narodowa, mf 76629 and mf 76167, respectively. . Akta 20. Sanguszków, Teka 5/27, 39, 41. . Ibid. The full text of the letter was “For information, lest there be any doubt about the Zasław Decree against Jews accused of killing a Christian, published this year. That is why herewith is printed a copy of a letter from His Highness Duke Lubartowicz Sanguszko, the Grand Marshall of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania addressed to a certain correspondent from Zasław, dated 5th September, 1747.” . AmL 141, 64r– 77r; quotes on 76v– 77r. . Akta Trybunału Koronnego in Archiwum Państwowe in Lubline (hereafter, ATK) 966, 1–4. . Akta miasta Krakowa in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (ul. Sienna) (hereafter, AmKr) 865, 34–36. . Akta miasta Chełma in Archiwum Panstwowe in Lublin (hereafter, AmCh) 2, 174v–175v. . Ibid. See other examples of Jewish merchants attacked and robbed, e.g., Akta miasta Przemysla in Archiwum Panstwowe in Przemyśla (hereafter, AmPrz) 761, 33– 37; AmCh 2, 490r–v; Castrensia Cracoviensia in Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Wawel) (hereafter, CC) 481, 359–361. . AmCh 2, 33r–v; AmL 143, 615; Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 15–17, 25–29. . CC 90, 76. . AmL 143, 403–422. . Ibid., 422. . Ibid., 412–413. . Ibid., 413. There were numerous cases where religious identity did not appear to matter. In 1679, Łukasz Krupa, a peasant working in his field, attacked and brutally beat a Jew, Lejzer Jakubowicz, near the town of Chełm, apparently because he



n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 15 – 2 1 8

had driven a horse close to the property line, thus encroaching on Krupa’s field. Court records give no indication that Jakubowicz was targeted as a Jew. See, AmCh 2, 33r–v. In Przemyśl, a complaint filed with the court tells of Anna Dumańska[0], charged with assaulting a Jewish woman, Malka Majorowa, “who lived in a stone house owned by the most reverend canon regulars,” and from whom she had borrowed money against a pledge. Unable to pay her debt, Dumańska[0] stormed into Majorowa’s house to demand the return of her pledge, but without payment. Majorowa was alone. Dumańska[0] grabbed a ladle and hit her on the forehead, so hard “that she fell on a bed.” She hit her again “with the above mentioned ladle on the face, nose, breasts. She made her bleed, beat her and would have killed her, if had it not been for the people who ran in after hearing the turmoil.” AmPrz 779, 5. . AmL 141, 273r–275r. . In 1639, Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 70– 74. . See Chapter 2 in this book. Uruszczak and Dwornicka, Acta Maleficorum, 66– 70. . CC 481, 138–141. . See, for example, AmL 141, 273r–275r. Although Jewish law permits a violation of the Sabbath to save a life, the principle of pikuah nefesh, it prohibits doing so to save property, e.g., Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 84b. . CC 1102, 235–238. See also numerous cases in AmL 94; see also AmPrz 762, 34. One Christian woman insulted another, calling her “a circumcised Jewess.” Insults against women were generally of sexual nature, calling them “whores.” Men were offended by being called “bastards,” “thieves,” or “dogs.” . In 1623, Akta m. Sawina (AmSaw) 1, Archiwum Państwowe in Lublin, 504–505. . Akta Sądu Komisaryjnego Zamojskiego (hereafter, ASKZ) 868/1, Archiwum Panstwowe in Lublin, 94. . AmCh 2, 189r. A few months later in Chełm, also in the house of a Jew, a similar fight between two Christian women occurred; the location is explained by the fact that many Jews, like some Christians, sold alcohol from their homes, inviting strangers and regulars to their houses for that purpose, ibid., 193v; see also similar fights among Christians in Jewish homes, 390v–391r, 432r, 438v. . ASKZ 868/4, 21. . Ibid. Acta CC at the Archiwum Państwowe in Cracow (Wawel) provide a wealth of cases of fights and insults among Jews. . See Chapter 3 in this book. . In 1622, AmSaw 4, 662– 663, 670– 672, 708– 710. . Ibid., 662, 672, 709– 710. Catholic synods and bishops in Poland repeatedly passed legislation prohibiting Christians from serving Jews. Such prohibitions also existed in secular law; see the Sejm constitutions of 1565, and 1690, Volumina Legum, 2: 51 par. 691, and 5: 399 par. 820. See also Kalik, “Christian Servants”; Kaźmierczyk, “The Problem of Christian Servants”; Teter, Jews and Heretics, 63– 69.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 1 8 – 2 25

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. AmSaw 4, 672. See also Teter, Jews and Heretics, 33–36, 62. . AmL 141, 389r–391v. . Ibid., 391r–v. Quotes from 390r–v, 391r. . On this, see also Debra Kaplan and Magda Teter, “Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto: Jews and the Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 40, no. 2 (2009). . AmL 141, 352r–365r. . Ibid., 352r–353v. . Ibid., 355r. . Ibid., 356r. . Ibid., 358r–v. . Ibid., 362v. See also Kaplan and Teter, “Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto,” 390–391. . AmL 141, 364r–v. . AmL 143, 238. . Ibid., 257. He went by the name “Wudka” because he did not want to “bring disgrace to his family name,” especially since his father had been an Orthodox priest. Ibid., 250–253. He had married a woman named Anuska in Warsaw, who “kept loose women,” and after her death, married another, Zophia, who also “kept a harlot.” . Ibid., 258–268. . Ibid., 253, 268–272. . Ibid., 274–292. . Ibid., 284. . Ibid., 292–303. . Ibid., 297–298. . Ibid., 305–312. . Ibid., 325–326. . Ibid., 328–335. . Simon Dubnow, ed., Pinkas Ha-Medinah: O Pinkas Va’ad Ha-Kehilot HaRashiyot Bi-Medinat Lita, Kovets Takkanot U-Fesakim Mi- Shenat 383 ’Ad Shenat 521 (Berlin: ’Ayanot, 1925), takkanah 28. . Dubnow, Pinkas Ha-Medinah, takkanah 61. . On the promotion of the legends during the Counter-Reformation, especially by the Bollandists, see Stow, Jewish Dogs. . Janusz Tazbir has argued that “there were also some capital cases for host desecration in the sixteenth-century, but such cases had happened already in the medieval period, and have little to do with the Reformation itself.” Janusz Tazbir, Reformacja, Kontrreformacja, Tolerancja (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1996), 61. . Janusz Tazbir, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Warsaw: PWN, 1972); Henryk Wisner, Rzeczpospolita

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Wazów: Czasy Zygmunta III i Wladyslawa IV (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Neriton Instytut Historii PAN, 2002), 9. . Tazbir, A State without Stakes, 207–208. . Jerzy Kłoczowski, A History of Polish Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 108.

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The following is a list of primary sources used for the book. A bibliography including secondary sources can be found at http://works.bepress.com/mteter/8/

Archival Primary Sources Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani (Rome) I Polonia 3; II Polonia 5; II Polonia 6 Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV, Vatican City) Archivi Arcis (A.A.): 4345; 4351; 4352; Arm I–XVIII, vol. 6527 Fondo Borghese I 825–827 Archiwum Archidiecezjalne w Poznaniu Acta Consularia (AC) 167; 183 AZ 5 “Dominikanie, Księgi rozchodowe, 1723–1753”; AZ 5/19 “Liber Consiliorum Conventus Sochacoviensi Ordinis Praedicatorum”; AZ 11 “Karmelici” Dep. Testium XV Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD, Warsaw) Księga grodzka-Kowal 3 (1556–1558) Księgi grodzkie Płockie (wieczyste): 25–27 Xięga Czarna. Krzemieniec (1747–1764),” Księgi miejskie krzemienieckie, Oddziału I, no. 58

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Acknowledgments

Books feature only their authors’ names on their covers, but in reality they are the fruit of the collective labor of many people, some of whom the authors may never have met. Librarians and archivists orga nize source material that would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover without them. Conversations with colleagues and friends, conference presentations, and responses to presentations and reviewers also impact a book’s shape. To turn a manuscript into a book requires another group of people— editors, anonymous readers, designers, and printers. Each book, too, stands on the shoulders of the previous generation, directly or indirectly, even though it may depart from them and, as an author hopes, chart a new course. The same is true for this book. Many institutions and individuals made it possible. Archivists and librarians in Poland, the United States, and Rome went beyond the call of duty to grant me access to their collections. As a scholar living in a place far from the relevant archives and able to conduct research only at specific times of the year, I am especially grateful to the staff at archives and libraries for accommodating my inflexible schedule and for sometimes opening up their holdings to me during off-hours. This was the case at the Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani (Rome), whose chief archivist, P. Emmanuele Boaga, O. Carm., graciously made materials available to me despite the fact that my request, dispatched weeks before my trip, did not arrive until my last day at the archive. Similarly, the staff s at the Archdiocesan

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ack now ledgments

Archive in Poznań and of the Metropolitan Archdiocesan Archive in Cracow were extraordinarily generous in granting access to their collections, even as their archives were undergoing renovations. I also thank Dr. Piotr Dymmel and Agnieszka Myśliwiec of the State Archives in Lublin for allowing me to examine the last surviving documents from the Crown Tribunal, or the Royal Tribunal; the full records were burned during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The collection of Crown Tribunal documents in Lublin had not been made accessible to scholars since the end of World War II because it had not yet been cata loged. I am grateful to Dr. Dymmel and Ms. Myśliwiec for making an exception and granting me access to the documents while the cata loging was in process. My gratitude also goes to the staff of the State Archive in Bochnia, especially Dorota Szymczyk and Joanna Potasz, and of the State Archive in Poznań, especially Małgorzata Kaczmarek, for accommodating my schedule and making sure that I could leave Poland with scans of the materials that I had examined in hand; the Diocesan Archive in Płock generously granted access to its collection outside of its formal hours. I am especially grateful to S. Idalia Rusnaczyk at the Archive of the Cathedral Chapter in Wawel in Cracow for her generosity and help. I express my thanks also to the Jesuit Archives in Rome (the ARSI), one of the most pleasant archives to work in, and especially to the archivist Mauro Bruni for his help, advice, and wonderful sense of humor. The staffs of the Secret Vatican Archive (Archivio Segreto Vaticano) in Rome, the State Archives in Przemyśl and in Cracow (both on ul. Sienna and the Wawel Castle), the Main Archive of Old Documents (the AGAD) in Warsaw, and the Muzeum of the town of Jarosław were helpful in granting me access to their rich collections, and I thank them as well. Although most research was done on-site, some libraries were kind enough to send me microfi lms and scans for materials ordered from the United States. Special thanks in this regard belong to Biblioteka Kórnicka Polskiej Akademii Nauk in Kórnik, particularly Magdalena Marcinkowska from Special Collections; to the Czartoryski Library, the Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow; and to the Library of the Ossoliński Institute in Wrocław. Finally, my work would have been greatly impeded had it not been for the untiring help of the staff of Wesleyan University’s Interlibrary Loan Office: Lisa Pinette, Kathy Stefanowicz, and Kate Wolf. Research for this book was supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, whose generous grant in 2007 allowed me to examine sources in archives in Poland and in Rome. I also received crucial support from my own institution, Wesleyan University, whose sabbatical leave policy and project grants at the very start and the very end of the research process were invaluable. I also thank the staff of the Information Technology Ser vices Department—Mariah E. Reisner, Kevin Wiliarty, and Allynn Wilkinson—for their help in preparation of maps and images.

ack now l edgments



A generous fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard allowed me to focus on writing and complete half of the manuscript in 2007–2008. That year at Radcliffe was one of the best years in my academic career. My thanks go especially to Drew Faust, Barbara Grosz, and Judy Vishniac for making it possible. During that year, I certainly wrote a lot, but I also learned tremendously from new friends and colleagues who not only read my work but shared theirs as well. Discussing science, literature, fiction writing, and politics (especially during the exciting 2008 primary election season) was extremely rewarding and truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The responses I received from the fellows were invaluable, and they have left their mark on this book. I am especially grateful to Carla Mazzio and Kate Wheeler, my “floor mates” for late-night conversations over curry, and to Giorgio Bertellini, David Frankfurter, Steve Kaplan, and Mitch Merbach for their comments on early drafts of my chapters. Many colleagues have been generous in commenting on my work, often listening to my ideas as I worked them out. Their pointed questions and comments forced me to hone my argument and, in some instances, saved me from errors, or suggested sources that made the book richer. My thanks go to Jacob Ariel, Jonathan Boyarin, Shaye Cohen, Jeremy Dauber, Lois Dubin, Malachi Ha-Cohen, Federica Francesconi, Paula Hyman, Daniel Kokin, Waldemar Kowalski, Vivian Mann, Evyatar Marienberg, Adriano Prosperi, Elissa Sampson, Joseph Shatzmiller, Kenneth Stow, Nicholas Terpstra, and Francesca Trivellato. I am also grateful to members of the Yale Interdisciplinary Workshop in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Studies, the Duke/UNC Carolina Seminars, University Seminars at Columbia University, and the Departments of History and Jewish Studies at Brown University, the Vanderbilt History Seminar, as well as to colleagues who attend the Division II lunch at Wesleyan University. Roman Chyła helped me obtain archival materials from Sandomierz and Jennifer Spinks shared proofs of her own book with me before it was published. I want to thank Debra Kaplan, who has read drafts of some chapters and who convinced me that discussion of “the sacred” deserved its own space. This book would have been impossible without the support and encouragement I received from Miriam Bodian, Elisheva Carlebach, Bernard Cooperman, Edward Fram, Moshe Rosman, and Jeremy Zwelling. I am especially grateful to Judith Brown for her exemplary mentorship, marked by strong support and pointed but gentle criticisms. I also want to thank the anonymous readers for the press, whose comments made the book better. Thanks to my parents for their interest in my work, and for forgiving me for not spending more time with them while in Poland. With this book, as with my first, working with Jeannette Hopkins has been a painful plea sure; her critical mind and sharp wit have left an imprint on this book and on my work more broadly. Our conversations also have taught me much about



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book publishing. Our professional relationship and our friendship have been infinitely rewarding. I also want to thank Kathleen McDermott at Harvard University Press for her efforts in shepherding the book into publication and Edward Wade for guiding me through the book's production. It has been a plea sure to work with the Press. The most thanks and deepest gratitude belong to my husband, Shawn Hill. First, he endured periods of loneliness while I traveled to archives; then he was subjected to my incessant reports about cases of torture and death that I was reading every day. His constant presence, his patience, and his love have sustained me over the years. This book is dedicated to him.

Index

Abraham from Sochaczew, 140 Abramovich, Nachum, 206, 207 Adamowa, Maria, 71 Adultery, 6, 7 Albertino, Mafeo, 129 Albigensian heresy, 27 Altötting, Marian shrine in, 108, 110 Ambrose of Milan, 25–26 Anabaptists, 167 Andzlik, Jacob, 50, 51 Andzliowic, Isaac, 216 Antependium, 16, 41, 43, 51, 54, 55, Antidoron, 211 Anti-Jewish writings, 166–173 Anti-Trinitarianism, 167 Apostasy, 6, 7 Aquinas, Thomas, 2, 9, 40–41, 62, 151–152 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 131 Arianism, 167 Arson, 215, 287n170 Ascalon, 17

Atheism, 87 Augsburg, 4, 130, 171; Diet of, 4–5, 8, 127, 130, 155; August II (king), 120 August III (king), 21 Augustine (emperor), 109 Authority: ecclesiastical, 2, 5– 6, 64, 106, 109, 128–129, 145, 146, 155–156, 168, 283n120; royal, 2–3, 8, 106, 165–166, 177, 187–189, 192–193, 199–200; within cities, 5, 188, 199, 294n48; of the magistrates, 7, 187, 193. See also Jurisdiction Avodah Zarah, 18 Babski, Lucas, 45, 46 Bałaban, Majer, 258n96 Bałdo, Jacob, 50 Baptismal water, 23. See also Water Baran, Jan, 64– 66 Barckhusen, Hermann, 101 Barthodziey, Matheus, 116

 Baruchowicz, Joseph, 181 Bavaria, 101 Bełżyce, 220 Bene, Giovanni del, 129 Benedictines, 94, 115, 117, 279n64 Beresteczko, 215 Bergamo, 128 Berkowa, Sara, 252n115 Berlin, 103 Bernardines, 93, 94, 117, 119, 122, 221; Bernardine nuns, 94 Bershadskii, S. A., 298n23 Bigamy, 6, 7 Bishops: spaces consecrated by, 10; objects consecrated by, 16, 38; and Lippomano’s battle against heresy, 141–148 Bitul, 24– 25, 243n93 Blasphemy 73, 146, 149, 155, 218, 224; prosecution of cases of, 4, 7, 64, 68, 73– 88, 256n76; punishments for, 7, 155; and transubstantiation doctrine, 25–29; and Protestants, 34. See also, Kalahora; Łyszczyński Blood libel. See Ritual murder Bochenski, Albertus, 161 Bochnia: sacrilege trials (1600), 46, 158–164, 205, 206; Jews expelled from, 164–166, 176, 190, 192–193, 203, 216; economic crisis in, 173–175, 214, 223 Bohdanowicz, Lord, 61 Bohemian Brethren, 92, 94, 155 Bolesław the Pious of Kalisz, 56 Bolestraszycki, Samuel, 235n29 Bona Sforza (queen), 131, 141 Boniface VIII (pope), 109 Boniface IX (pope), 101 Bookbinders, 24 Books: banned, 28–29, 87, 128–129, 145; pamphlets, 8, 79, 81, 83, 84, 99, 100, 102–104, 111, 113–114, 132, 148, 150, 152–153, 157, 166–173,175, 202, 205, 211, 213, 224, 258n96, 268n96, 285n147, 286n157, 286n162; Jewish, 12, 97, 214; holy, 12, 128;

inde x Christian, 24, 81; heretical, 74, 93, 129, 145, 152, 235n29. See also Printing Bora, Katherine von, 171 Borek, Stanisław, 137, 138, 140, 151 Borzymowski, Nicolas, 162, 170 Brandenburg, 100, 103 Brest Litovsk, 206, 210. See also Brześć Brodawka, Itzhak, 136, 148, 283n126 Broniowski, Joannes, 186, 187, 191 Brytan, Jacob, 165 Brześć, 21, 136, 138, 148. See also Brest Litovsk Brzesc, Bartholomeus, 43 Brzoska, Jan Kazimierz, 84, 86 Buxtorf, Johannes, 280n67 Bużeński, Hieronim, 159 Bynum, Caroline, 31, 103, 112, 210, 286n157, 286n162 Calvin, John, 34, 106; Short Treatise on the Holy Supper (Calvin), 34; Institutes of the Christian Religion, 34, 35 Calvinists: and sacrilege 46–49, 92 Cambron, 79 Campsor, Abraham, 82 Canada, 1–2 Candles, 72 Capistrano, John, 93 Carafa, Carolo, 141 Carafa, Giovanni Pietro. See Paul IV (pope) Carmelite friars (or Carmelite Order of the Strict Observance), 90– 91, 94– 95, 97, 104, 105, 107, 108, 113, 114, 115–123, 124, 240n70, 261n3, 265n62, 273n180, 275n215. See also Poznań (Church of Corpus Christi) Carmelite friars, discalced, 94 Caro, Joseph, 20 Carolina, 6, 74, 223 Castaldo, Gian Battista, 130 Cathar heresy, 27 Cathedral of St. John, 84

inde x Catholic Church: jurisdiction, 4– 6; and power struggles with state, 2–3; sacred space in, 10; sacred objects and practices of, 31–39, 40; and secular courts, 87– 88; Sochaczew trial’s impact on, 148–156; and guilds, 196; and sacrilege cases, 200. See also Authority. Census (1619–1620), 96– 97 Chalice, 11, 16, 29, 38, 41, 42, 44, 45, 56, 60, 62, 97, 111, 158, 159, 203–204, 205, 243n97, 247n173, 288n11, 288n13 Charlemagne, 109 Charles V (emperor), 128, 223 Chasuble, 16, 32, 38, 57, 218. See also Clergy (vestments of ) Chełm, 63, 215, 217 Chełmice, 149 Christian children, killing of. See Ritual murder Christians: views of sacred, 10–14; and holy image violations, 80; and violent crime, 214–219; in Jewish-Christian gangs, 219–225. See also Catholic Church; Protestants Chrysostom, John, 11–13 Chrzanowski, Ignacy, 152 Chrzanowski, Jan, 51–52, 248n8 Church Council of Breslau (1267), 28 Churches: Jewish views of, 21–22 Church of St. John, 52 Church of St. Martin, 93 Ciborium, 16, 17, 42, 47, 60, 61, 62, 97, 149, 152, 203–204, 205, 264n50. See also Pyx Cierpiątka, Woyciech, 63 Clement IV (pope), 120 Clergy, vestments of, 16, 32, 33, 54, 238n37; Catholic, jurisdiction, 4–5. See also Bishops; Communion and sacrilege; Eucharist Confessio Augustana, 127 Confession (a religious rite), 47, 64, 66– 69, 70, 71, 129, 133, 143, 159, 179, 202; sacrilegious, 86, 87, 202

 Confessional, 68 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, 6, 74, 223 Constitution of 1505, 3 Constitution of 1562–1563, 5 Constitution of 1565, 5, 188 Constitution of 1573, 5 Constitution of 1633, 199 Consubstantiation, 33 Consumption patterns, 72– 73 Council of Constance (1415), 28 Council of Lipnik (1558), 35 Council of Lithuania, 21, 56, 222 Council of Trent (1545–1563), 67, 124, 128, 159, 254n12 Counter-Reformation, 127, 131, 156, 192, 224 Courts. See Ecclesiastical courts; Secular courts Cracow: blasphemy in, 7, 74; sacred space and objects in, 20, 23, 28; sacrilege crimes in, 35, 36, 42–43, 45; Church of St. Nicholas, 42; Church of St. Nicholas, 42; Church of St. Stephen, 45; fencing of stolen goods in, 52–53; robbery of the Dominican Church in, 52–54; theft of sacred objects in, 59; eucharistic miracle in, 69; image vandalization in, 80; Church of the Most Holy Trinity, 81– 82; Kalahora in, 81– 83; and pilgrimage sites, 114; Lippomano in, 130; politicization of crimes in, 213; violent crimes in, 217, 220, 221 Crown Tribunal, 3, 58, 82, 124, 201,214–215, 235n29, 240n70, 316 Crucifi xes, 38, 47, 55, 73, 77, 79, 80, 132, 148; oath before, 69 Crusades, 109 Cyril of Jerusalem, 26 Czarny, Moszko, 189 Czartoryski, Duke, 219 Częstochowa, as pilgrimage site, 109–115 Dąbrowa, 45 Dąbrowski, Caspar, 59

inde x

 Damhouder, Jodocus, 66, 78, 223, 234n9, 249n45; Praxis Rerum Criminalium, 66, 78, 223 David, Isaac ben, 19 Deggendorf, 101 Diet of Augsburg (1555), 4, 8 Długosz, Jan, 99, 102, 110–111; Historia Poloniae, 110 Doberan, 101, 103 Dominican friars, 27, 52–53, 81–83, 90, 96, 102, 107–108, 114–115, 119, 120–123, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 146, 166, 222, 276n164, 287n170 Dominican nuns, 93, 115, 120, 122, 123, 272n164 Drohojowski, Jan (bishop), 141, 142, 146 Dubiński, Szmul, 76– 77, 218 Duchnicki, Andreas, 143, 145 Dudka, Mathias, 157–175 Dumańska, Anna, 302n63 Dzierzgowski, Nicolaus, 132–133, 138 Dziurka, Joannes, 189 Easter, 25, 67, 114, 126, 132, 133–134, 138, 143, 144, 158, 160, 176, 183, 189, 197, 238n37, 243n105, 270n137, 288n10, 291n80. See also Passover Eastern Christianity (also Orthodox, Ruthenian), 13, 26, 42, 49–50, 111, 176, 194, 196, 207, 211, 237n20, 240n70, 298n27, 299n36; Epiclesis, 210; Liturgy of Preparation, 210; Proskomidia, 210; Prosphoron, 210; Prothesis, 210 Ecclesia, 10–11, 14, 237n10 Ecclesiastical courts, 3–4, 5, 6, 154–155; and the Reformation, 3– 6, Economics and competition: in Poznań, 107–109; in Bochnia, 163–164, 173–175; trade, 174, 195, 197; in Przemyśl, 183 Endingen, 136 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 145 Esau (biblical), 18 Eucharist: 2– 3, 10, 16–18, 26– 27, 28, 40, 42, 67, 90, 99, 100–101, 106, 130, 140,

143–144, 151–152, 157, 167–168, 171, 264n50, 288n10, 288n13; and sacrilege, 3–4, 8, 42, 63– 64, 278n43; theft of, 8, 59, 64, 97, 178, 188, 203, 204; Jewish views on, 18–19, 242n83; miracles of, 29– 31, 68– 69, 90, 100, 104, 110, 151, 170, 266n68, 268n89; in Poland, 29, 244n119; Protestants and, 31– 36, 38, 106, 118, 153; anxiety over, 64, 66; prosecution of sacrilege cases concerning, 64– 66, 69– 72; and heresy, 130, 143–144, 283n120; in Eastern Christianity, 26, 210– 211; preparation of, 210. See also Host desecration; Pilgrimage sites; Transubstantiation doctrine Eucharistic cults, 27–28, 104–107, 115–116 Eugene IV (pope), 266n69 Europe, 2; ecclesiastical jurisdiction in, 64, 75; “miracle pamphlets” in, 99; religious politics in, 123; heresy in, 130. See also Germany; Italy Evangelical churches, 106, 245n135 Extracts from Sochaczew (pamphlet), 150 Falk, Joshua, 19 Fencing stolen goods, 51–52, 56–57 Ferel, Guillaume, 33 Fischer, Stanisław, 165, 166 Flamens, Johannes, 79 Fortynowicz, Albert, 48 Fourth Lateran Council (1215), 14, 25, 27, 67, 109, 150 Frączka, Jacob, 161, 162, 163, 170 France, 33 Franciscans, 117, 119, 120 Fredro, Jacob Maximilian, 191, 192 Gabriel of Verona, 93 Gaiek, Stanislaus, 214 Gaiewnik, Georgius, 140 Gall, Herman, 283n127 Gamrat, Piotr, 74 Gangs, 219–225

inde x Gargulia, Albert, 51 Gawęndzyk, Mathias, 203–205 Gdańsk, 46, 142 Gedalia, Meir ben, 257n83 Genuflection, 35 Germany (or German lands), 4, 28, 33, 67, 99, 101, 103–105, 108, 114, 128, 130, 132, 134, 141–142, 171, 224, 267n82, 276n18, 279n54, 283n127 Gerstel, Sharon, 14 Ghent, 30 Glinsky, Jan Trach, 115 Głogowski, Paulus, 143 Gniewkowo, Florianus de, 143 Gniezno, 139, 142, 146 Golamowski, Adam, 208 Gombiner, Abraham, 20 Gorączko, Andreas, 165 Górka, Łukasz, 136, 140, 263n29 Górka, Stanisław, 94 Gospels. See New Testament Greek Orthodox, 13. See also Eastern Christianity Gregory the Great (pope), 102, 266n68 Gregory, Brad, 75 Grodno, 19 Groicki, Bartłomiej, 7, 74– 75, 256n76 Grudziński, Andrzej Karol, 117, 273n180 Grudziński, Sigismund, 117, 273n180 Gui, Bernard, 27 Guilds, 24, 174, 194, 196–197, 198 Güstrow, 100 Hainaut, 79 Halakhah, 20, 23, 222, 242n83. See also Jewish law Ha-Levi, David ben Samuel, 20, 21, 23; Turei Zahav, 20, 23 Halperin, Israel, 258n96 Hamman Lif, 17 Hannegau province, 79 Harper, Stephen (Prime Minister of Canada), 1–2

 Hebellius, Sarvatius, 81– 82 Heiligengrabe, 100, 101, 103 Henneberry, Brian, 1 Heresy: in secular courts, 6– 7, 75, 256n65; and transubstantiation doctrine, 25–29; in Poland, 28–29, 127–148, 149; in Europe, 67; of Protestants, 126–156; Lippomano’s battle against, 127–148, 152, 155–156; Catholicism as, 153 Hierarchy of the sacred, 13, 40–41 Hirsch, Zvi, 258n96 Holy of Holies, 14–15 Holy water, 38. See also Water “Homilies to Judaizers” (Chrysostom), 11 Host. See Eucharist. Host desecration: 2, 8, 29, 46, 48, 56, 90, 93, 101, 126, 224; Jews in legends of, 29–31, 58–59, 70, 91, 95, 107, 112, 114, 134, 153, 157, 170, 205; in Paris, 30–31; and ritual murder accusations, 56, 134, 135–136, 183, 209–211, 222, 224, 246n145, 278n41, 278n46; and church robberies, 59, 61– 63, 223, 251n98; in Wrocław, 93; in Poznań, 97–104; in pamphlets, 103, 132, 134, 158, 172; and crucifi xion, 104; and violent crimes, 223–225; in Kalisz, 284n135 Hoycius, Blasius, 116 Hsia, R. Po-chia, 171, 268n91 Hus, Jan, 27–28, 92, 100; De Sanguine Christi, 28 Hussites, 28, 155 Ickowicz, Jacob, 174 Iconoclasm, 64, 80, 245n135 Iconography, 11, 95, 99, 237n10, 278n46 Idolatry, 18, 20–22, 23, 55, 242n83, 242n89, 258n94; Christianity as, 10, 18–19, 23; Catholicism as, 34, 153; Protestants and, 35–38, 150–153 Images, sacred, 37, 78– 81 Incense, 72 Innocent III (pope), 29, 69 Innocent VII (pope), 101

 Irreverence, 66– 69 Isaac of Proshnitz (Jewish printer in Cracow), 43 Isaac, Aaron ben, 43 Israel of Przeworsk, 59– 60 Isserles, Moses, 23, 80 Italy, 14, 64, 129–130, 131, 147, 155, 253n2, 276n5 Izakowicz, Abram, 215 Jacob (biblical), 18 Jacques of Vitry, 26 Jagiełło, Władysław (king), 28–29, 98, 101–102, 106, 110 Jakubowicz, Lejzer, 301n63 Jan Kazimierz (king), 118 Jan Sobieski (king), 118 Jan of Leszno Leszczyński, 117 Janecz, Karol, 56 Janicki, Gregorius, 45, 56, 59 Janusz of Mazovia, 28 Jarosław, 68, 78– 79 Jasiewicz, Joannes, 220–221 Jasiński, Gregorius, 77 Jericho, 172–173 Jerusalem Temple, 9, 17 Jesuits, 5, 16, 22, 37, 43, 51, 54, 57, 58, 68– 69, 70, 80, 87, 92– 93, 94, 95, 121, 131, 173, 179, 201, 237n20, 241n76, 251n103, 254n20, 278n43, 282n101 Jesus, 11, 15, 25–26, 29, 32, 35, 68, 71,76, 82, 89, 95, 104, 107–108, 109, 114–115, 123–124, 132, 133, 137, 143, 144, 149, 151, 160, 167, 209, 210, 238n37, 242n83, 244n116, 264n56 Jewish law, 13, 18–20, 23–24, 55, 302n70. See also Halakhah Jews: views of sacred, 17–25; in desecration legends, 29–31; Christian sacred objects possessed by, 51– 62; as fences, 51–59; and holy image violations, 79– 80; in Bochnia, 160–161; expulsion from Bochnia, 164–166; in Przemyśl, 177, 194–199; access to power of, 201; libel against in court, 201–209;

inde x and violent crime, 214–219; in JewishChristian gangs, 219–225; suing Jews in Christian courts, 222; arresting Christians, 224 Jobin, Bernhard, 171 John XXII (pope), 79 John of Patmos, 11 Jokier of Cracow, 78– 79, 80 Jozefowicz, Schar, 252n115 Jozwowicz, Kielman, 217 Julius III (pope), 130 Jurisdiction: secular vs. ecclesisastical, 3–4, 5, 6, 154–155, 235n29; and power struggle in Przemyśl, 186–194. Kabuz, Johann, 266n69 Kaczmarczyk, Stanisław, 51 Kalahora, Matatias, 81– 88, 259n113 Kalisz, 56, 58, 149, 251n103, 284n135 Kamionka, 71 Karlstadt, Andreas, 32 Kasperski, Joannes, 214 Kazimiera, Maria (queen), 21 Kazimierz, 43, 52, 55, 72, 172–173; Church of St. Catherine, 52; Church of the Holy Trinity, 52 Kaźmierczyk, Adam, 83 Kaznowski, Wojciech, 219 Kielmach, Semion, 215 Kmita, Jan Achacy, 162, 166–173, 201; New Jericho, 167, 172; Lives of the Polish Kings, 172; Talmud or the Jewish Faith, 172 Kochowski, Wespazjan, 83 Kociszewski, Joannes, 189–190 Kock, 36 Kolbuszowa, 75 Kolibabicha, Zophia, 179–181, 185–186 Komaje, 61; Komayski church, 60 Königsberg, 152 Konopnica, 44 Końska Wola, 134 Kopel, Jacob, 214 Koplowa, Freyda, 214

inde x Kościelecki, Janusz, 92 Kostka, Stanisław, 80 Koszydło, Mathias, 57, 251n80 Kowal, Wasek, 208 Kowalski, Franciszek, 76– 77 Kozłów, 133–134 Kożuchowski, Abraham Jachimowicz, 216 Kraiński, Krzysztof, 37–38 Krakowianka, Brunowa, 217 Krasicki, Alex, 196, 220–221 Kraśnik, 57 Krosno, 220 Krosnowski, Severinus, 161, 163 Krowicki, Reverend, 35–36 Krupa, Łukasz, 301n63 Krzemieniec, 211, 213 Kucharzowa, Caterina, 8, 176, 178–186 Kurdupka, Hedwiga, 69 Kutno, 99 Kyrie Eleison (prayer), 89 Łabędzka-Topolska, Maria Danuta, 92 Laesae maiestatis divinae, crime of, 66, 78, 133 Laesae maiestatis (treason), 84, 106 Łaski, Jan, 145 Lazar of Worms, 136 Łazęcka, Dorota, 126, 131–141 Łążek, 133 Łażniki, 133–134 Leblanc, Roméo, 1 Lent, 38, 67 Leo IX (pope), 266n68 Leo of Halicz, 111 Leybowicz, Zoruch, 212 Libel against Jews in court, 201–209 Lipman, Jacob, 56 Lippomano, Bartolo, 127 Lippomano, Luigi: and power struggle between Catholic Church and state, 4–5; and Protestants, 8; and heresy cases, 127–131, 154–155; Confirmation and the Establishment of all Catholic Dogmas, 129;

 and Sochaczew trial, 147; and anti-Jewish rhetoric, 152; on ritual murder, 210 Lippomano, Pietro, 127 Lisowski, Jakub, 76, 77 Liturgy, 40, 89, 95, 123, 125, 177, 210–211. See also Selihah Litwinianka, Maryna Janowa, 207, 208, 209 Łodziński, Franciszek, 72, 73 Łomski, Jerzy, 207, 209 Łowicz, 131, 142, 145, 146, 156 Lublin: Jewish businesses in, 24; theft of sacred objects in, 43–44, 49, 51, 55, 57, 58, 70– 71, 216; image vandalization in, 79– 80; Jews, 134, 135, 136, 149, 201, 257n83; sacrilege trials in, 201; violent crime in, 214; Jewish-Christian gangs in, 219–222; Bernardines, 221; Dominicans, 222. See also Crown Tribunal Lubliniec, Marcin, 112 Lublinski, Adam, 216 Lubomirski, Stanisław, 157, 188, 205, 206 Lubrański, Jan, 92 Łukasz of Bnin Opaliński, 117 Luterka, Eva Condusowa, 214 Luther, Martin, 28, 32–33, 105, 106, “Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacrament,” 32 Lutheranism, 92, 94 Lwów, 215 Łyszczyński, Kazimierz, 81– 88, 224 Maciejowski, Bernard (cardinal), 16–17, 67– 68, 72 Maciusek, Woyciech, 65 Mackiewicz, Jarosz, 22 Macklenburg, 100 Magdeburg law, 91, 103 Magic rites, 70– 72 Magistrate courts,193. See also Secular courts Maharam of Lublin, 257n83 Maimonides, 19 Mainz, 19 Majorowa, Malka, 302n63

 Malczewski, Jan, 49–50 Man of Sorrow, 114, 115, 272n169 Manna, 171 Marcellius III (pope), 130 Marcourt, Antoine, 33 Mark Brandenburg, 28, 100, 123 Markuszowice, 44 Martin V (pope), 110 Martyrdom, 19, 183–184, 185 Matthias of Lublin, 201–203 Maximus the Confessor, 14 Maykowic, Samuel, 50 Mazovia, 28 Mazur, Maciej, 157–175 Mazzio, Carla, 145 Meetinghouses, 10 Me’ il ha-torah, 13 Meir ben Gedalia of Lublin, 257n83 Miastkowo, 71 Miczyński, Sebastyan, 79– 80; A Mirror to the Polish Crown (Zwierciadło Korony Polskiey), 79 Międzyboż, 218 Miękisz, 179, 180 Mikdash me’at, 9 Mikucki, Cyprian, 219–220 Milan, 25 Minsk, 22 Miracle books and stories, 80, 112; “Miracle Book of the Poznań Church of Corpus Christi,” 105 Miracles: eucharistic, 29–31, 90, 266n68; and cult and pilgrimage sites, 99, 113–114 Mishnah, 13, 18, 24 Miszkowski, N., 140 Modone nella Morea, 128 Modrzewski, Andrzej Frycz, 145; De Republica Emendanda, 145 Moneylending activities, 174 Monstrance, 16, 32, 41, 42, 44, 60, 61, 62, 63, 101, 106, 149, 152, 266n73, 266n75 “Monstrous” births, 171 Morski, Stanisław, 164, 165

inde x Moskal, Valentinus, 77 Murawa, 60 Murder victims, 214–219. See also Ritual murder Muzowiczowa, Anna, 194 Myers, David, 67 Myrrh, 72 Nachmanowicz, Chem, 21 Nas, Johann, 171 Naygodth, Caspar, 165, 166 New Testament, 11, 25 Nihil novi (constitution), 3 Nobility: and royal authority, 2–3; and secular courts, 92; in Bochnia, 175; in Przemyśl, 186, 188 Nochim of Lublin, 59– 60 Non- Catholic churches: thefts from, 4, 42; sacred space in, 10; sacred objects in, 49–51. See also Jews; Protestants Nowe Miasto, 43 Nowiński, 76 Nowy Sącz, 52 Nuremberg, 103 “Nuremberg Chronicle” (Schedel), 103 Oath, 11–12, 61, 80, 86, 161, 179, 205; in synagogues, 11–12, 79, 257n83; before a crucifi x, 69 Oberman, Heiko, 286n162 Objects. See Sacred objects Ochota, Stanislaus, 162 Oleśnicki, Zbigniew, 110 Olszowski, Andreas and Paulus, 45 On God Tortured and Beaten by the Jews in Sochaczew and on Its False Miracles (pamphlet), 150 Opaliński, Łukasz, 273n180 Orthodox Church, 13, 26, 42, 49, 211. See also Eastern Christianity Ostrogska, Anna, 78 Ostroróg, Jakub, 92 Ostroróg, Sendziwoj, 94

inde x Ostrowsky, Georgius, 192 Our Lady of Częstochowa, 108. See also Virgin Mary Owadowski, Stephan, 218 Paczyński, Jacob, 143, 144, 146 Pałuski, Alexander, 221 Palatine, office and authority of, 95– 96, 117, 135, 139, 147–148, 186–188, 190–194, 199, 224. See also Authority Pamphlets. See Books Paris, 30–31, 132, 237n10, 260n145 Parish houses, 44 Parokhet, 13 Partaglia, Ferdinand, 124 Parzygelny, Helias, 43 Paschasius, 29; Of the Body and the Blood of the Lord (De Corpore et Sanguine Domini ), 29 Passau, as pilgrimage site, 103, 134 Passover, 26, 177, 181–182, 184, 189. See also Easter Paten, 16, 37, 44, 45, 53, 56 Patterns of consumption, 72– 73 Paul III (pope), 74, 127, 139 Paul IV (pope), 4–5, 8, 127–128, 139, 142, 146, 148; Cum nimis absurdum, 8, 148 Pawłowa, Katarzyna, 71 Pawłowski, Mathias, 58 Peplenski, Joannes, 249n26 Perdek, Wawrzyniec, 65 Perepecza, Jan, 208 Picards, 155 Pieniążek, Jan Chryzostom, 84– 85, 86 Pilgrimage sites, 99–105, 109–115; Wilsnack as, 28, 100, 103; Passau as, 103, 134; Częstochowa as, 109–115 Pinczów, 55, 59 Pinsk, 22 Piotrków, 5, 153, 220 Piotrkowski, Piotr, 143 Płock, 137, 1473 Podwodowski, Hieronim, 261n3 Pogwizdów, 203

 Poland. See Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Polesakowa, Anna, 69 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 60, 177, 188, 210, 211; libels against Jews in, 2, 222; courts in, 3–4, 41, 214; synagogues as places of “impiety” in, 13; men accused more often than women of looting in, 167; “monstrous” births in, 171; JewishChristian coexistence in, 194; Eastern, 212; Eucharistic cult in, 244n119 Pomerania, 123 Poręmbski, Stanisław, 73 Post-Reformation: libels against Jews in, 2; secular courts in, 3; the sacred in, 8; anti-Jewish movement as part of antiProtestantism, 31; miracles in, 80; sacrilege charges against Christians in, 200; religious tensions in, 222; sacrilege charges against Jews in, 223, 225; tolerance in, 225 Potocki, Walenty, 83 Power struggles: of Catholic Church and state, 2–3; in Przemyśl, 176–199 Powsiński, Franciszek, 95– 96, 104, 108, 116, 122; The Precious Deposit of Jesus’ Body and Blood, 95, 104, 107 Poznań: pollution of church cases in, 16; and Reformation, 35, 104–107; sacrilege crimes in, 42, 43, 45; theft of textiles in, 54; fencing of stolen goods in, 56–57; Jesuits in, 68 Poznań, 89–125; Church of St. Wojciech, 43; Church of Corpus Christi, 54, 90, 91–95, 100, 104; Church of the Most Holy Blood of Christ, 90, 91, 108, 124, 263n37, 269n111; Church of St. Stanislaus, 92, 93, 94; Jewish-Christian relations in, 93, 95–97, 123–125; Church of Mary Magdalene, 93, 122; desecration legend of, 97–104, 205; eucharistic cult in, 104–107, 115–116; marketplace of the sacred in, 107–109; Częstochowa competition with, 109–115; Carmelites’ battle for city property, 116–123. See also Świdwińska house

 Prayers, 20, 24, 37, 71, 72, 73, 87, 89– 90, 114, 169, 170, 172, 177, 183–185, 199, 213, 280n67, 293n28; house of, 22. See also Liturgy Prayer shawl, 23 Printing, 6, 8, 95, 100, 101, 102–103, 106, 111, 128, 152, 166, 171, 179, 213, 287n2. See also Books The Profane: within churches, 14–17 Property: crimes against, 41–42; of Jews expelled from Bochnia, 164–166; ownership rights, 165, 195, 196 Property taxes, 117 Protection fees, 164 Protestants: in Poland, 35–39; thefts from churches of, 4, 42, 49–51; views of sacred, 10–14, 31–39; and sacred space, 13; and iconoclasm, 80; heresy of, 126–156; Sochaczew trial’s impact on, 148–156. See also specific denominations Przemyśl: host desecration, Kucharzowa case (1630), 8, 178–186, 202, 204, 206; and sacred spaces, 50; power struggle in, 176–199; Jewish- Christian relations in, 194–199, 201; Lubomirski in, 205; religious violence in, 214; economic competition in, 214, 223 Przeworsk, 60, 189 Pucz, Troianus, 140 Pulkau, 100, 267n80 Punishments: determination of, 3, 41, 44, 45, 48, 50, 66, 69, 74, 87, 178, 182; for sacrilege, 7, 31, 41, 223; of heretics, 28. See also Rituals Pyx, 16, 17, 32, 42, 45, 47, 55, 56, 57, 58, 62, 63, 152, 249n26, 264n50 Rabbinic thought, 17–25, 55–56 Radom, 58 Radziwiłł, Nicolas, 152, 153 Rawa, 68 Rawienski, Lord, 60– 61 Rebekah (biblical), 18 Re- Catholicization, 92, 93, 176, 224, 225

inde x Reformation: and Eucharist, 2, 10; and secular courts, 3–4, 222–223; and Poznań, 93, 104–107; and Sochaczew trial, 141 Rej, Mikołaj, 35 Rejowce, 63 Relics, 17, 40, 57, 94, 105–106, 107, 108–109, 110, 114, 134–135, 242n83, 266n69 Rerus, Tomasz, 90, 97– 99, 104, 105, 113, 261n3; History of the Mysterious Finding of God’s Body, 90, 97– 99 Richard, André, 1 Ritual murder, 56, 103, 134, 135, 136–137, 183, 209–214, 222, 224–225, 246n145, 258n96, 268n92, 278n46, 280n65, 281n79. See also Host desecration Rituals: 10, 13, 16, 23, 25, 27, 29, 72, 137, 159, 172, 196, 212, 222, 236n4, 281n68; language of, 18; of punishment, 18, 41, 84, 88; Protestants and Catholic rituals, 31–34, 38. See also Eucharist Robberies: highway, 220–221; of Catholic churches, 42; and host desecration, 58–59, 61– 62, 63, 66, 70, 203; victims of, 214–219. See also Theft Robbers, 57, 216, 221, 251n98 Rogaliński, Józef, 102 Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic Church Romanowski, Andreas, 52, 53–54 Rome, 8, 124, 216 Rosentreter, Maciej, 31 Royal authority. See Authority Rozwadowski, Piotr, 57 Rubin, Miri, 29, 99, 100 Rubinkowksi, Hieronym, 82, 83– 84 Rue des Jardins (Paris), 30 Rybak, Lucas, 214 Rymanów, 50 Rytwiński, Andreas, 44 Rzeszów, 76 Sachsenspiegel, 6; Saxon Mirror, 6, 74, 223; Speculum Saxonum, 6, 74, 223

inde x Sacramentarians, 33 The Sacred: Catholic views of, 10–14, 31–39, 40; Protestant views of, 10–14, 31–39; within churches, 14–17; Jewish views of, 17–25; and transubstantiation doctrine, 25–29. See also Eucharist; specific sacred spaces and objects Sacred Congregation of Council of Trent, 120–121 Sacred images, 37, 78– 81 Sacred objects: and Protestants, 31, 37; Christian sacred objects in Jewish hands, 23–25, 51– 62; Jewish views of Christian, 23–25; and sacrilege, 41–46; and Calvinists, 46–49; in non-Catholic churches, 49–51; in synagogues, 49–51; prosecution of sacrilege cases concerning, 72– 73; relics as, 94, 108–109, 134–135 Sacred space: Christian views of, 10–14; Jewish views of, 10, 17–18; within churches, 14, 17; and the Eucharist, 15–17; cleanliness of, 15–16, 20; pollution of, 15–16, 17; Protestants, 31 Sacred times, 257n92 Sacred topography, 9–10 Sacrilege (or sacrilegium): in law, 2; as crime, 3, 40–41; secular court’s treatment of, 3–4, 200; in secular courts, 6; punishments for, 7, 41; Jews and, 8; Aquinas, Thomas, 40–41; and sacred objects, 41–46; in Bochnia, 46–49, 158–164 Saint-Bavon monastery, 30 Saints, 17, 38, 40, 73– 74, 83, 94, 104, 109, 129, 131, 196, 238n37; Stanisław Kostka, 80; St. Valentine, 99, 255n58; Stanislaus, 110, 112, 114; Boniface, 247n173. See also Relics Salamonowicz, Jakub, 59– 61 Salmeron, Alfonso, 131 Salt, 72– 73, 173–174, 292n93, 292n95 Salt mine, 158, 159, 173 Samsonka, Freyda, 203–205, 206 Samuelowicz, Lazur, 75, 87

 Sandomierz, 21, 36, 68– 69, 76, 80, 189, 255n29, 268n92. Sanguszko, Lubartowicz, 301n53 Sanguszko, Paweł, 213 Sanok, 49, 51 San River, 190 Sawina, 218 Schedel, Herman, 103 Schobolarzewna, Jadwiga, 54, 55 Secret Vatican Archives, 131 Secular courts: jurisdiction of, 3–4, 5, 6, 154–155; religious crimes prosecuted in, 4– 6, 63– 88; sacrilege in, 41, 63– 64, 69; blasphemy cases in, 74 Seifex, Paulus, 94 Selihah, 177, 183–184, 186, 187, 193. See also Prayers Senator, Moszko, 61 Senczyk, Ryczko, 46 Sepkowski, Joannes, 219 Servetus, Michael, 155 Shulhan ’Arukh, 20, 23 Siecinski, Mathias, 178, 179, 188 Sigismund I (king), 3, 117 Sigismund III (king), 94, 118, 157, 164, 176, 190–193, 197–198 Sigismund August (king), 3, 5, 117–118, 132, 137, 154 Silesia, 123 Simon of Trent, 103, 266n68 Sin: as crime, 3–4, 7, 33, 35, 41, 48, 64, 66– 69, 74– 75, 81, 159, 169; of sacrilege, 40–41; of sacrilege, 78, 157–160, 181; confession of, 133, 143, 160, 169; and Jews, 148; jurisdiction over, 154; forgiveness for 168–169; punishment for 171 Sinners, 41 Sirkes, Joel, 19, 258n94 Skarga, Piotr, 5– 6, 131 Słęczka, Walenty, 64, 65 Slonik, Benjamin, 22 Smolkowicz, Franciszek, 55 Sobieburski, Nicolaus, 143

 Sobolów, 50 Sochaczew trial (1556), 8, 126–127, 131–141, 148–156, 201, 205, 206, 210, 214, 223 Solomon of Spandau, 103 Space. See Sacred space Spandau, 103 Spinks, Jennifer, 171 Stampowski, Stanisław, 145 Stawy, 58 Stefan Batory (king), 96, 174, 187, 195 Stempowski, Stanisław, 143 Stendal, 103 Sternberg, as pilgrimage site, 103 Stoups, 38 Strappado (or the rack), 53, 61, 66, 70, 71, 161, 180, 183, 184, 185. See also Torture Stryjski, Moszko, 181 Sulisławice, 69 Święcicki, Nicolas, 118, 120, 121, 122 Świdwinska house (Poznań), 89, 95, 97, 108, 115–120, 122, 124. See also Church of the Most Holy Blood. Swostak, Paweł, 50 Synagogue: 23, 49, 100, 134, 136, 149, 205, 217, 241n74; thefts from, 4, 42–43, 50–51, 216; sacred space in, 9–10, 12; as a symbol, 11, 124, 237n10; of Satan, 11; holiness of, 13–14, 17–18, 19–20, 40, 239n58, 240n64; selling of, 13, 19; seating in, 21; sacred objects in, 40, 49–51; in Wiślicz, 42; in Bochnia, 164–165, 166; liturgy, 177, 183, 199; in Przemyśl, 195–196, 296n95. See also Oath Szkolnik, Bieszko, 131–141 Szmuklerz, Moszko, 177, 178–186 Szmuyło of Stomiłowa Kamionka, 220 Szotek, Aaron, 56 Szymański, Stanisław, 220 Tailor guild, 198 Tallit, 23 Talmud, 25, 243n97 Taxes, 21, 22, 92, 117, 120, 195, 196 Tazbir, Janusz, 225, 303n107

inde x Temple in Jerusalem, 9, 17 Textiles, 42–43, 54, 214, 216, 238n37. See also Antependium Theft: from non- Catholic churches and synagogues, 4, 42–46, 49–51; of sacred objects, 40– 62; punishment for, 44; fencing of goods, 51–52, 56–57; concealment of origin of objects, 54–55 Thilrode, Jean de, 30–31 Thomas Aquinas, 2, 9, 40, 62, 151–152 Thresholds between sacred and profane, 14–15 Thurek, Stanisław, 74 Tolerance, 5, 15, 225 Torah scroll, 10, 13, 16, 17, 40, 50, 205, 257n83 Torture: interrogation under 3, 43, 45, 47, 49, 52–53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 66, 70–71, 72, 73, 87, 133, 135, 160–161, 169, 176, 180, 183–184, 185, 187, 190, 202–203, 204, 207–209, 218, 219–220. See also strappado (or the rack) Toruń, 37 Trade, 174, 195, 197 Trade organizations, 196–197,198. See also Guilds Trafidło, Mathias, 77 Transubstantiation doctrine: and sacred space, 10, 14–15; and blasphemy, 25–29; Fourth Lateran Council, 27; and heresy, 27–29; 129, 144; in Poland, 29 Treason, 84, 107, 169, 188. See also Laesae maiestatis divinae; Laesae maiestatis (treason) Trent. See Council of Trent; Simon of Trent Treter, Tomasz, 99, 101, 104–107, 112–114 Trzeciecki, Andrzej, 153 Turski, Albert, 58 Tyncel, Bartholomeus, 248n13, 251n80 Tysowski, Jan Józef, 211–212 Uniejów, 142 University of Padua, 127 Urban: conditions, 20, 209; space (Poznań), 91. See also Authority

inde x Vatican Archives, 131 Venice, 129 Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 152, 285n147; Two Letters (Duae Epistolae), 152 Verona, 128, 129, 154 Violence, 11, 49, 81, 93– 94, 173, 188, 194, 206, 207, 214–215, 218, 222, 225, 258n94; anti-Jewish, 83, 95, 101, 132, 174, 177, 201, 209, 211–214, 263n35, 267n80; judicial, 87– 88. See also Torture Violent crime and victims, 214–219; punishment for, 41. See also Robberies Virgin Mary, 24, 68, 72, 73– 74, 75, 79, 83, 104, 108–114, 115, 140, 144, 151, 153, 172, 271n143, 272n164, 282n91; feast of the assumption of, 67, 97, 98, 115 Waldensians, 155 Wandel, Lee Palmer, 34–35 Warsaw, 28, 52, 84–85, 87, 130, 131, 192, 213, 220 Wasnowicz, Martinus, 64– 66 Water: 31, 99, 131, 204; for washing, 20; holy (or baptismal), 23, 38, 72– 73, 128, 239n27; mills, 119 Węgierski, Wojciech, 37 Węgrzynek, Hanna, 141, 206, 210, 279n49 Weigel, Hans the Elder, 284n127 Wejglowa, Katarzyna, 256n60 Wieliczka, 173 Wielkopolska, 6 Wilkomierski district, 61 William of Blois, 26 Wilno, 142, 152 Wilsnack, 266n69; as pilgrimage site, 28, 100, 103, 268n89; and Luther, 105; Eucharistic miracles in, 151 Wiślicz, 148 Wiśnicz, 50, 51, 64, 72, 188, 203, 206, 216 Wisniewski, Joannes, 214 Wiśniowiecki, Michał Korybut, 166 Witchcraft, 4, 6, 38, 41, 65, 68, 72– 73, 185, 198, 235n29 Wiżuny, 61

 Władysław IV (king), 193, 194, 197 Władysław of Opole, 271n146 Włocławek, 141, 142–143, 145 Włodzimierz, 219, 220 Woida, Albertus, 162 Woitaczkowa, Anna, 71 Wojnia (Wohyn), 206, 208, 210 Wojnicz, 47 Women: and magic, 70– 73; Jewish, 20, 43, 50, 51, 171, 172, 252n115, 298n23, 302n63; Christian, servants, 30, 95– 96, 126, 131, 132–133, 140, 205, 206, 207, 217–218, 298n27, 302n79; sacrilege 48, 68– 70, 90, 167, 176, 203; legal status of, 48, 249n44; Jewish, as fences, 54, 55, 57–59; insults against, 302n71 Wonpeln, Just, 16 Worcester, 26 “World Chronicle” (Schedel), 103 Woytkiewicz, Lord, 61 Wrocław, 93 Wronka, Izaak Jozephowicz, 161, 162, 163, 170 Wudka, Alexander, 220 Wujek, Jakub, 37 Yohel of Murawa, 60 Yuval, Israel, 18 Zafran, Eric, 79 Zaięska, Regina, 70– 71 Załuski, Andrzej Chryzostom (bishop), 84, 86 Zamiączki, Gaspar, 65 Zamość, 217 Zarembiusz, Adryan, 106–107 Zasław, 212–213 Zebrzydowski, Andrzej, 141, 142 Zibicensis, Matthias, 143 Złotnik, Andrzej, 78– 79 Żółkwia, 215 Zublowski, Sebastian, 44 Żukowicz, Błażej, 78

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