“All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals in Medieval Christian Art and Drama

Abstract

In many written and artistic Christian sources,we find an anti-Jewish portrayal of an alleged Jewish costume of desecrating the Host or blood libels. The stories and images are so common that we find, for example, the story of Simon of Trent being used as a joke in a Facebook post from April 3, 2015, wishing a “Happy Passover.” Following Miri Rubin’s methodology,1 where she ties together blood libels and accusations of host desecration in texts, images, and drama, in this paper I wish to further discuss the issue of “staging” or the public sphere of the accusations, with a focus on images and texts written in the vernacular language.