Anonymous

In medieval times, the Jews of Europe were widely suspected of crimes against the dominant Christian society. Where they were tolerated at all, Jewish citizens were restricted to certain neighborhoods (known as "ghettos" after the Jewish quarter in Venice). They were forbidden to hold certain jobs, to educate themselves in schools, fight in armies, or enlist in the service of monarchs. Thus segregated from the mainstream, the Jews made an easy target for accusations that they had deliberately brought the plague down on their Christian neighbors.

The fact that Jews died of the plague as readily as did nonJews did not convince their accusers. By the thousands, Jews were rounded up, tortured on a stretching rack or otherwise in order to exact "confessions" of instigating or perpetuating the Black Death. Two such confessions, those of...