‘…and order was upset’: Easter, the Eucharist, and the Jews of Prague, 1389

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Abstract

This paper examines the 1389 Easter attack on the Jewish community of Prague and the ways in which it was given meaning in contemporary Christian and Jewish writing. The outburst of violence against a community living in close (and sometimes contested) proximity, allegedly sparked by an host desecration accusation, resonated with concerns animating the contemporary Bohemian Church: anxieties about Jewish-Christian coexistence and usury, and, most importantly, the late-fourteenth-century debates over lay access to the Eucharist, frequent communion, and ecclesiastical reform. I argue that the events of 1389 were drawn into these debates, with the Jews coming to embody the vices and obstacles that reformers sought to eradicate from a corrupt Church.

Citation

Milan Žonca, ‘“…and order was upset”: Easter, the Eucharist, and the Jews of Prague, 1389’, in The Medieval Roots of Antisemitism: Continuities and Discontinuities from the Middle Ages to the Present Day, ed. Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß (New York; London: Routledge, 2018), 287–305.

@incollection{zonca2018,
	address = {New York; London},
	title = {"...and order was upset": {Easter}, the {Eucharist}, and the {Jews} of {Prague}, 1389},
	booktitle = {The {Medieval} {Roots} of {Antisemitism}: {Continuities} and {Discontinuities} from the {Middle} {Ages} to the {Present} {Day}},
	publisher = {Routledge},
	author = {Žonca, Milan},
	editor = {Adams, Jonathan and Heß, Cordelia},
	year = {2018},
	pages = {287--305},
}