Why Were Jews Blamed for the Black Death?

Bubonic plague—the “Black Death”—killed 25 million in 14 century Europe, roughly 40 percent of the population. Long-distance merchant ships bearing flea-infested rats likely spread the deadly disease-causing bacilli throughout Western Europe. But the scientific understanding of communicable disease was more than five centuries away.

So when the populace searched for answers, the ecclesiastical hierarchy lectured them on how the Black Death was God’s retribution for their wicked ways. In Spain, tolerance of the “killers of Christ” was among them. Soon tales of Jews pouring poisonous powder into wells circulated throughout what is now Germany and France. What followed was a massacre of Jews unparalleled in its magnitude and ferocity.