Belgium · 14th Century
Brussels
In 1370, a series of events occurred in Brussels that exemplify one of the darkest chapters in medieval Christian-Jewish relations. According to a version of the account that circulated from 1403, a Jewish merchant from Enghien allegedly wanted to obtain consecrated Hosts to profane them. A converted Jewish person was supposedly bribed to steal Hosts from the Church of St. Catherine, which were then allegedly stabbed in the Brussels synagogue on Good Friday, causing them to bleed. This narrative follows the classic pattern of medieval "blood libel"—false accusations against Jewish communities claiming they desecrated consecrated Hosts or murdered Christian children.
About this miracle
The story spread rapidly through Brussels, inflaming anti-Semitic sentiment. Based solely on these accusations and without credible evidence, violent persecution erupted against the Jewish community. Between 6 and 20 Jews were executed, likely burned at the stake in public. The entire Jewish community was banished from Brussels, their property confiscated, and the community effectively destroyed.
The allegedly miraculous Hosts were placed in reliquaries at the Church of Saint Gudula (now Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula), and an annual procession was established in 1529 to commemorate the supposed miracle. Habsburg rulers donated stained glass windows depicting the event. For nearly 600 years, this devotion continued with local ecclesiastical approval, though no formal papal decree or Vatican investigation ever explicitly recognized this as an authentic Eucharistic miracle.
Modern historical scholarship has thoroughly discredited this account. Historians and theologians now recognize the Brussels 1370 incident as a fabricated blood libel used to justify persecution and violence against the Jewish community. Such false accusations were tragically common in medieval Europe—approximately 100 such cases occurred before 1600, resulting in thousands of Jews being defamed, imprisoned, tortured, executed, despoiled, or exiled across Europe.
In the aftermath of Vatican II and its declaration Nostra Aetate (1965), which called for renewed Christian-Jewish relations and rejected all forms of anti-Semitism, the Church began to reexamine problematic devotions rooted in anti-Jewish prejudice. In 1968, the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels officially derecognized the cult and formally suppressed the annual procession. In 1977, Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens installed a bronze plaque in the cathedral (in the former chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, now the treasury) abjuring the so-called miracle.