*Ø* Blogmanac July 13 | Feast of the Miracles, Brussels, Belgium
The 19th-Century English folklorist, Robert Chambers (The Book of Days), told of a quaint annual celebration in Brussels.
If a Sunday, the fiesta started on July 13, or the first Sunday after the 13th, and it went for 15 days. On the first day, there was a procession of the Holy Sacrament of the Miracles. This consisted of three consecrated wafers, with a miraculous, albeit anti-Semitic, story behind them.
In 1369 there lived at Enghein, in Hainault, Belgium, a rich Jew named Jonathan, who paid another Jew, a poor man named Jean de Louvain, to steal some wafers from the Church of St Catherine in Brussels, for the purpose of using them in an anti-Christian ceremony. For his sins, Jonathan died soon after the theft, murdered by person or persons unknown. His widow gave the wafers to a group of Jews who used them in a defiling ceremony on Good Friday, 1370.
With “horrid imprecations” they ceremoniously stabbed the wafers with poniards. To their amazement, blood flowed from the wafers. The Jews were exposed, and burned at the stake on May 22, 1370. Three of the original 16 wafers were restored to the clergy of St Guduli, where they have remained as sacred objects ever since. They have worked miracles, and even stopped a plague in 1529. Or, so it is said.
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Medieval Anti-Semitism
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The 19th-Century English folklorist, Robert Chambers (The Book of Days), told of a quaint annual celebration in Brussels.
If a Sunday, the fiesta started on July 13, or the first Sunday after the 13th, and it went for 15 days. On the first day, there was a procession of the Holy Sacrament of the Miracles. This consisted of three consecrated wafers, with a miraculous, albeit anti-Semitic, story behind them.
In 1369 there lived at Enghein, in Hainault, Belgium, a rich Jew named Jonathan, who paid another Jew, a poor man named Jean de Louvain, to steal some wafers from the Church of St Catherine in Brussels, for the purpose of using them in an anti-Christian ceremony. For his sins, Jonathan died soon after the theft, murdered by person or persons unknown. His widow gave the wafers to a group of Jews who used them in a defiling ceremony on Good Friday, 1370.
With “horrid imprecations” they ceremoniously stabbed the wafers with poniards. To their amazement, blood flowed from the wafers. The Jews were exposed, and burned at the stake on May 22, 1370. Three of the original 16 wafers were restored to the clergy of St Guduli, where they have remained as sacred objects ever since. They have worked miracles, and even stopped a plague in 1529. Or, so it is said.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
Medieval Anti-Semitism
Today’s Special on the Menu of Hate
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