ABSTRACT

The article explores Christian anti-Jewish polemic and violence in fourteenth-century Prague and particularly the events of 1389 through the few surviving sources that carry the memories of what happened in the two communities: a Latin parodic account, Passio Judaeorum Pragensium, on the one hand, and the Hebrew elegy of the local Jewish scholar Avigdor Kara, All the Afflictions, on the other. By placing the attack in the context of Easter celebrations and its liturgy, Milan Žonca shows how liturgies produced a particular imagination of the Other. He examines how this imagination resonated with the contemporary religious debates, especially those surrounding the Eucharist and frequent communion, and shaped Christian memories of the attack and its implications.