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Can the origin of transubstantiation and antisemitism be linked to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215?
"At the Fourth Lateran Council, convened by Pope Innocent in 1215, the Church decreed that Jews living in Christian lands were at all times to wear a distinctive badge on their clothing. This badge, generally a solid yellow circle sewed onto an upper garment, was periodically imposed on European Jews for hundreds of years.
Another decision at the Fourth Lateran Council, accepting the doctrine of transubstantiation as official Church dogma, seemingly has no relevance for the Jews. Within thirty years, this dogma led to the annihilation of the entire Jewish community of Berlitz, Germany, which was charged with kidnapping a wafer and torturing it. The Berlitz massacre unfortunately was not a unique event. "In Prague, in 1389, a historical study of antisemitism notes, “the Jewish community was collectively accused of attacking a monk carrying a wafer. Large mobs of Christians surrounded the Jewish neighborhood and offered the Jews the choice of baptism or death. Refusing to be baptized, three thousand Jews were murdered. In Berlin, in 1510, 26 Jews were burned and two beheaded for reportedly ‘desecrating the host.’”
The decisions made at the Fourth Lateran Council helped fulfill the vision for the Jews Pope Innocent III had earlier articulated in a letter to Count Nevers: “Jews, like the fratricide Cain, are doomed to wander about the earth as fugitives and vagabonds, and their faces must be covered with shame.”
Sources: Max Wurmbrand and Cecil Roth, The Jewish People, pp. 140-142. The passage on Jewish suffering occasioned by charges of host desecration is from Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, p. 103
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Can the origin of transubstantiation and antisemitism be linked to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215?
"At the Fourth Lateran Council, convened by Pope Innocent in 1215, the Church decreed that Jews living in Christian lands were at all times to wear a distinctive badge on their clothing. This badge, generally a solid yellow circle sewed onto an upper garment, was periodically imposed on European Jews for hundreds of years.
Another decision at the Fourth Lateran Council, accepting the doctrine of transubstantiation as official Church dogma, seemingly has no relevance for the Jews. Within thirty years, this dogma led to the annihilation of the entire Jewish community of Berlitz, Germany, which was charged with kidnapping a wafer and torturing it. The Berlitz massacre unfortunately was not a unique event. "In Prague, in 1389, a historical study of antisemitism notes, “the Jewish community was collectively accused of attacking a monk carrying a wafer. Large mobs of Christians surrounded the Jewish neighborhood and offered the Jews the choice of baptism or death. Refusing to be baptized, three thousand Jews were murdered. In Berlin, in 1510, 26 Jews were burned and two beheaded for reportedly ‘desecrating the host.’”
The decisions made at the Fourth Lateran Council helped fulfill the vision for the Jews Pope Innocent III had earlier articulated in a letter to Count Nevers: “Jews, like the fratricide Cain, are doomed to wander about the earth as fugitives and vagabonds, and their faces must be covered with shame.”
Sources: Max Wurmbrand and Cecil Roth, The Jewish People, pp. 140-142. The passage on Jewish suffering occasioned by charges of host desecration is from Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, p. 103
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