In 1347 twelve ships, carrying dead and dying crews, arrived in the Sicilian port of Messina introducing the Black Death to Europe. Over the next five years it would claim the lives of over a third of the European population.
Today the Black Death is known to be caused by the bacteria Yersinia Pestis and was transmitted by bites from infected flea which were carried ashore by rats and then through contact with broken skin, but in the 14th Century nothing was known about bacterial organisms and some people began to believe it was a punishment from God for leading sinful lives and the only way to gain God’s forgiveness was to expel heretics.
At a time of already rising Antisemitism in Christian Europe attention quickly turned to the minority Jewish population as a target to blame and false allegations that Jews were poisoning drinking wells soon began to spread.
Ignoring Papal decrees declaring Jews were being falsely accused, plans to destroy entire Jewish communities continued. False confessions, obtained under torture, led to the inhabitants of entire villages being burnt at the stake. Babies were taken from condemned parents to be baptised and in the German city of Mainz 6000 Jews were killed in just one day, with some historians believing they committed suicide rather than be captured alive by mobs.
The Black Death created levels of Antisemitism and persecution never seen before in western Europe, driving the Jewish population eastwards for generations.
Similar factitious antisemitic tropes, based on accusations fabricated at a time when we had little or no scientific knowledge, continue to reappear even today from extremist groups, inciting violent attacks on today’s Jewish population.
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