University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022
Between 1348 and 1350, Jews throughout Europe were accused of having caused the spread of the Black Death by poisoning the wells from which the entire population drank. But if the well-poisoning accusations against the Jews during these plague years are the most frequently cited of such cases, they were not unique. Barzilay explores the origins of these charges of well poisoning, asks how the fear took root and moved across Europe, which groups it targeted, why it held in certain areas and not others, and why it waned in the fifteenth century.
