The Black Death

The Jewish Plot‣By 1348 it was widely believed that the plague was not an act of God, but aJewish conspiracy aimed at achieving world domination‣The Swiss town of Chillon started the rumor of “Rabbi Jacob”, themastermind, and a network of Jewish agents spreading across Europe‣The Jews held in a small bag or package, the poison was made fromlizards, frogs, and spiders, ground up with the hearts of dead Christians andHoly wafers‣All this a variant on an earlier rumor that lepers spread the disease, paid byJews in league with the Muslim Caliph (sounds a bit like Glenn Beck)‣Between the summers of 1348 and 1349 a large number of Jews were killed‣-marched to public bonfires, burned at the stakes, beaten to death, orstuffed into empty wine caskets and rolled into the Rhine‣While this swept across France and Germany and Switzerland Marseillesremained a small pocket of tolerance, the 2500 Jews in the city were leftunharmed