Fictional Tales and Their Narrative Transformations: Accusations of Image Desecration Against Jews in 12th and 13th Century Europe

Abstract

Abstract:This article examines the literary topos of image desecration in the religious, cultural, and social preoccupations of medieval Europe and argues that holy images and crucifixes were not merely understood as "art" in the modern sense, but as representations, even conduits, of divinity, and their desecration was interpreted as violence against the sacred. The legendary role of the Jews as agents of violence against Christ's body, accused of attacking wax crucifixes or images of the Passion, was transformed, for religious reasons, into that of host desecrators in the thirteenth century.