the virgin mary against the jews

The Virgin Mary against the Jews: Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage to the SchöneMaria of Regensburg, 1519-25Author(s): Allyson F. CreasmanSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 963-980Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4144117 .Accessed: 17/05/2011 17:25

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Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIII/4 (2002)

The Virgin Mary against the Jews: Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage

to the Schone Maria of Regensburg, 1519-25

Allyson F Creasman Davidson College

This paper examines the propaganda and polemic surrounding the pilgrimage to the Schline Maria of Regensburg, exploring the connections between the anti-Jewish violence that precipitated the pilgrimage and the intense devotionalism to the Virgin Mary that characterized it. Founded on the ruins of the city's Jewish synagogue in 1519, the pilgrimage to Schone Maria stands in a long line of Marian pilgrimage sites associated with anti-Jewish violence. Contemporary writings both celebrating and condemning the pilgrimage drew heavily on long-standing beliefs that demonized the Jews, suggesting a link in the popular imagination between anti-Jewish violence and Marian devotionalism.The association of the "diabolic" influence of the Jews over the site and the purifying revelation of the Virgin Mary's power there sheds light on popular Christian understandings of the role of the Virgin Mary in human salvation and the interaction of the divine and the profane in the creation of sacred space.

IN FEBRUARY 1519, THE CITIZENS OF THE IMPERIAL CITY OF REGENSBURG celebrated

the expulsion of the Jews from their city by joining together in the demolition of the Jewish synagogue. During the demolition, a portion of the roof collapsed, crushing master stonemason Jacob Kern. Critically injured, he was taken to his home, where he received the last rites of the church. Kern's wife, meanwhile, prayed to the Virgin Mary to spare her husband's life. Miraculously, Kern recovered and returned to work. His injuries had meant nothing to him, he told his astonished neighbors, because the Virgin Mary had at all times held him in her hand.1

The news of Jacob Kern's remarkable recovery quickly spread through the community. The revelation of Mary's power amid the ruins of the Jewish ghetto gave a devotional cast to the anti-Jewish fervor already gripping the city, further escalating the violence against the Jews and their property. Within a month, the City Council of Regensburg had erected a wooden chapel on the ruins of the synagogue to receive the flood of pilgrims seeking the aid of the wonder-working Virgin of Regensburg.2 The chapel, consecrated to the Sch6ne Maria, or Beautiful

1Georg Harder, Die wunderbarlichen zaichen beschehen zu der Schonen Maria zu Regenspurg (Nurem- berg:Jobst Gutknecht, 1519), sigs.A2r-3r (hereafter cited as Die wunderbarlichen zaichen).

2Gerlinde Stahl, "Die Wallfahrt zur Sch6nen Maria in Regensburg," Beitrige zur Geschichte des Bis- turns Regensburg 2 (1968): 63.Jacob Kern, meanwhile, had returned to his sickbed, where he died of his injuries a short time later.The City Council voted to pay his medical expenses from the income of the pilgrimage chapel. Carl Theodor Gemeiner, Regensburgische Chronik, ed. Heinz Angermeier (1821; repr., Munich: C.H. Beck, 1971), 4:358n; Leonhard Theobald, Die Reformationsgeschichte der Reichsstadt Regensburg, vol. 1, Einzelarbeiten aus der Kirchengeschichte Bayerns, bd. 19 (1936; repr., Nuremberg: Eigenverlag des Vereins flir bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 1980), 51.

964 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIII/4 (2002)

Virgin Mary, recorded more than seven hundred intercessions during the first three years of its existence3 and drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from throughout southern Germany and beyond.4 The dramatic outpouring of enthusiasm for the

Sch6ne Maria of Regensburg, however, also drew fire from critics who saw the pilgrimage as, at best, socially destabilizing or, at worst, demonically inspired. By 1525, the pilgrims had stopped coming to the chapel, and the fervent devotion to

Sch6ne Maria had, it seemed, all but evaporated. The expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg and the subsequent pilgrimage to

Sch6ne Maria left their mark in the miracle books of the shrine, popular ballads, and the observations of contemporary chroniclers.The violent origins of the shrine and the fervent devotionalism displayed there made it a subject of controversy both during its short existence and ever afterwards. While contemporaries fretted over the conduct of the shrine's pilgrims and debated the source of its miracles, the shrine is also representative of a long line of Marian pilgrimage sites associated with incidents of anti-Jewish violence. I propose, in this article, to examine the propaganda and polemic surrounding the controversial pilgrimage to the shrine of the

Sch6ne Maria in order to explore the connections revealed in such texts between the anti-Jewish violence that precipitated the pilgrimage and the intense devotionalism to the Virgin Mary that characterized it. Contemporary books and ballads both celebrating and condemning the pilgrimage draw heavily on long-standing popular beliefs that demonized the Jews, suggesting a link in the popular imagination between anti-Jewish prejudices and Marian devotionalism. The associations made by the shrine's defenders and detractors between the "diabolic" influence of the Jews over the site and the purifying revelation of the Virgin Mary's power there shed light on popular Christian understandings of both the role of theVirgin Mary in human salvation and the interaction of the divine and the profane in the creation of sacred space.

The devotion of Sch6ne Maria's faithful and her changing fortunes in the 1520s cannot be fully understood apart from the history of Regensburg's Jewish community. Once a thriving mercantile center, Regensburg experienced a severe economic decline in the late fifteenth century. Economic pressures had an impact on the entire population, including the city's Jewish community. While the Jews had once engaged in large-scale commercial lending and an extensive trade in commodities, they were forced into an increasingly marginalized economic status in the closing decades of the fifteenth century.5 Relegated largely to petty money-lending, the Regensburg Jewish community became ever more the focus

3Stahl,"Wallfahrt," 100. 4Most of the pilgrims came from the Upper Palatinate, Upper and Lower Bavaria, Franconia,

Bohemia, and Austria, while some came from as far away as Breslau, Baden, Alsace, and Hungary. Stahl, "Wallfahrt," 174-77.

5Raphael Straus,Jewish Life in Regensburg and Augsburg, trans. Felix N. Gerson (Philadelphia:Jewish Publication Society, 1939), 42-43; Markus J.Wenninger, Man bedarfkeinerJuden mehr: Ursachen und Hin- tergrinde ihrer Vertreibung aus den deutschen Reichsstiidten im 15. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Herman Bohlaus, 1981), 167.

Creasman / Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage to the Shone Maria 965

of Christian hostility, directed primarily against Jewish economic competition and the taking of interest.6

The economic tensions in the city only brought to the surface the lingering religious hatreds and suspicions that had marked Christian-Jewish relations in Europe for generations. In 1476, anti-Jewish sentiment in Regensburg flared with the arrest of several prominent members of the Jewish community for the alleged ritual murder of six Christian children.7 For four years, the Regensburg City Council, urged on by an angry populace, sought "justice" against the Jews. The emperor intervened, however, and threatened to withdraw the city's imperial status if prosecution of the Jews continued.8 The Jews of Regensburg were finally released, but not before they promised to reimburse the city for the costs it had incurred in their imprisonment and prosecution.9

Although the ritual murder prosecution was over, anti-Jewish sentiment in the city did not abate.10 Popular uprisings in the city in 1493 and again in 1513 brought aggressively anti-Jewish factions into the city's political leadership.11 As the new century began,Jewish money-lending remained a source of resentment in the eco- nomically stricken city, and the economic tensions between the Christian and Jewish communities were exacerbated by the high inflation pervasive throughout the region during this period.12 Representatives of the city's guilds appeared before the Council twice to protest the Jews' economic competition.13 The Jews, they alleged, unfairly undercut the tradesmen by selling inferior goods at lower prices,

"Straus,Jeuwish Life, 146-51. An analysis of a registry of pledges confiscated following the expulsion of the Jews indicates that Jewish money-lending during this period was largely directed toward the extension of small consumer loans to the lower and middle strata of Regensburg society. Klaus Matzel and J6rg Riecke, "l)as Pfandregister der Regensburger Juden vom Jahre 1519," Zeitschriffii r bayerische Landesgeschichte 51 (1988): 767-806.

7R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder:Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 72-85.

8The Jews of Regensburg were not constitutionally incorporated within the community but were, as a practical matter, subject to the City Council's authority. Ultimate control over the Jews within the Holy Roman Empire rested with the emperor. In the fourteenth century, the dukes of Bavaria acquired control over the Jews of Regensburg from the emperor, but such rights had reverted to the emperor by the time of the expulsion of the Jews in 1519. Raphael Straus has linked the comparative stability of Jewish-Christian relations in Regensburg in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries relative to other German cities of the era to this division of authority over the Jews. Straus,Jewish Life, 50, 97, 138-41.

9Hsia, Ritual Murder, 72-82. "1)Hsia, Ritual Murder, 83. 11 Marita A. Panzer, Sozialer Protest in Siiddeutschen Reichsstddten 1485 bis 1525. Anhand der Fallstu-

dien: Regensburg, Augsburg und Frankfurt am Main (Munich: Kommissionsverlag UNI-Druck, 1982), 39- 107; Peter Herde, "Gestaltung und Krisis des christlich-jiidischenVerhdiltnisses in Regensburg am Ende des Mittelalters," Zeitschrift fiur bayerische Landesgeschichte 22 (1959): 370-71; Straus,Jewish Life, 156-57.

12Wilhelm Abel, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe from the 13th to the 20th Centuries, trans. Olive Ordish (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), 117-18; Torsten Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier: Anabaptist Theologian and Martyr, trans. Irwin J. Barnes and William R. Estep (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1978), 53; Henry C.Vedder, Balthasar Hiibmaier: Leader of the Anabaptists (NewYork: AMS Press, 1971), 39-41.

13See "Complaints of the Trades to Regensburg," 29 March 1516, and "Petition of Regensburg to

Imperial Court at Innsbruck," 28 June 1518, document nos. 833 and 979 in Urkunden undAktenstiicke zur Geschichte derJuden in Regensburg, 1453-1738, ed. Raphael Straus, Quellen und Erorterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, bd. 18 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1960), 290-93; 348-53.

966 Sixteenth Century ournal XXXIII/4 (2002)

contracting with foreign artisans, and dealing in stolen merchandise. Moreover, Jewish usury sucked the Christian folk dry,"injuring them in their persons and their property."14 The Regensburg City Council gave the guilds a sympathetic hearing and joined with them in a petition to the emperor. To the guilds' complaints, the City Council added its own frustrations over the Jews' failure to fully reimburse the city's costs for the ritual murder prosecution.15 Relations between the communities had deteriorated to such an extent that the emperor again intervened, dispatching imperial commissioners on three occasions to attempt a mediation between the factions.16

By the second decade of the sixteenth century, resentment against the Jews' perceived economic competition was joined with Christian religious enthusiasm to further fuel popular unrest against the Jews in Regensburg. The new preacher in the city's cathedral, Balthasar Hubmaier, spoke out against the Jews' money-lending practices, arguing that toleration of the sin of usury in the community represented a great danger to the souls of the city's Christians.17 Hubmaier was joined in his agitation against the Jews by much of the local clergy, who denounced the Jews' offenses against "the common man" and the politicians who defended them.18 With the support of the local clergy, the Council secured a papal bull in 1517 condemning usury and the participation of Christians in activities in any way associated with it.19 Regensburgers organized a boycott of Jewish merchants, and some Christian merchants refused to sell to Jewish customers.20 The emperor again intervened in 1518, ordering the City Council to expel Hubmaier and halt further vio- lations of the Jews' privileges.21

With the death of Emperor Maximilian I in January 1519 and the subsequent interregnum, the Jews of Regensburg found themselves without an imperial pro- tector against the still hostile City Council. On 21 February 1519, representatives of Regensburg's guilds again appeared before the City Council urging the Council

14R. Po-chia Hsia, "The Usurious Jew: Economic Structure and Religious Representations in an Anti-Semitic Discourse," in In and Out of the Ghetto:Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, 1995), 164.

15 "Petition to Imperial Court," document no. 979 in Urkunden nnd Aktensticke, 348-53. 16Straus,Jewish Life, 158. 17"Statement of Baldasar Huebmaier," ca. 11 January 1518, document no. 950 in Urkunden und

Aktenstiicke, 336-37; Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley: University Calif. Press, 1993), 53;Vedder, Balthasar Hiibmaier, 39-44.

18Panzer, Sozialer Protest, 68. 19See "Pope Leo X to Administrator Johannes of Regensburg," 7 June 1517, document no. 916

in Urkunden und Aktenstiicke, 324-25. The implementation of this bull was blocked by the emperor. Straus,Jewish Life, 160.

20"Christophorus Ostofrancus on the Expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg," 21 February 1519, document no. 1040 in Urkunden und Aktenstiicke, 385; Wenninger, Man bedarf keinerJuden, 174; Barbara Schuh, "Die Gewalten des Wunders. Zeichen der Machtausiibung im Bereich einer splitmittel- alterlichen Wallfahrt," in Von Menschen und ihren Zeichen: Sozialhistorische Untersuchungen zum Spaitmittel- alter und zur Neuzeit, ed. Ingrid Matschinegg et al. (Bielefeld:Verlag fir Regionalgeschichte, 1990), 85.

21Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier, 57-59; Schuh, "Gewalten des Wunders," 89.

Creasman / Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage to the Sh6ne Maria 967

to take advantage of the interregnum to finally expel the Jews.22 Seeing its chance, the Council issued an order the same afternoon commanding the Jews to vacate the

city within five days.23 The Jews were given two hours to vacate their synagogue, after which the

structure was demolished by a jubilant Christian mob "with unreasoning passion."24 Stirred by the news ofJacob Kern's miraculous deliverance at the hands of

theVirgin Mary during the synagogue's demolition, men and women united under

theVirgin's banner to destroy the Jewish cemetery, carting off the gravestones as tro-

phies and disinterring some of the dead.25 Although some Jewish homes also sus- tained damage, the mob's greatest violence was directed against the Jews' most holy places: their house of worship and their burial ground.26 The deliberate desecration of these sites suggests not only the depth of popular hatred against the Jews, but also its source. The crowd lashed out not simply against an economic competitor, but a

spiritual enemy.27 Hubmaier's sermons had stressed the Jews' alleged usury as a source of spiritual pollution to the Christian community. The font of this pollution was represented most concretely in the Jews' synagogue and burial grounds. By obliterating these places, the Christians of Regensburg sought to cleanse their city of the supposed Jewish contamination endangering their souls.

Even prior to the destruction of the synagogue, Hubmaier had recommended to the City Council that the site be dedicated to theVirgin Mary and that the structure be converted into a chapel in her honor.28 For the people of Regensburg, the construction of a Marian chapel over the ruins of a Jewish synagogue would have held particular significance. The prior litigation between the city and its Jews over the ritual murder investigation and the infringement ofJewish economic privileges had taught the City Council to expect that its expulsion of the Jews would be sub-

ject to close imperial scrutiny. Indeed, the Jews had dispatched a grievance to the

imperial court within hours of the expulsion, followed closely by a letter from the Council seeking to justify its action.29 Anticipating a challenge, the Council sought

22Gemeiner, Regensburgisclhe Chronik, 4:354; Wilhelm Volkert, "Die spditmittelalterliche Judenge- meinde in Regensburg," in AlbrechtAltdorfer und seine Zeit, ed. Dieter Henrich (Regensburg: Mittelbaye- rische Druckerei &Verlagsgesellschaft, 1981), 139.

23Stahl, "Wallfahrt," 57. About eight hundred people were expelled in 1519, approximately 5 to 10 percent of the total population of the city. Straus,Jewvish Life, 161-62.

24Leonhart Widmann, Chronik von Regensburg in Die Chroniken der deutschen Stiidte vom 14. bis ins 16.Jahrlundert, bd. 15 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1878), 31 ("mit unverniifftiger hizigkait").

25Theobald, Reformationsgeschichte, 53-54; Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 54. 26About thirty Jewish homes were destroyed. Stahl, "Wallfahrt," 53. 27Volkert, "Judengemeinde," 144; Schuh, "Gewalten des Wunders," 82; Marcel Simon, "Christian

Anti-Semitism," in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict from Late Antiquity to the

Reformation, ed.Jeremy Cohen (NewYork: NewYork University Press, 1991), 134-39.

28"Interrogation of Balthasar Hubmaier at Ziirich," 13 January 1526, document no. 1152 in Urkunden und Aktenstiicke, 428.

29"Supplication of the Jews of Regensburg to the Imperial Court at Innsbruck," 22 February 1519, and "Regensburg to Imperial Court at Innsbruck," 22 February 1519; document nos. 1052 and 1045 in Urkunden undAktenstiicke, 391-93.The expulsion of the Jews was illegal, but their protest to the imperial court brought them little satisfaction. A portion of the Jews' confiscated property was returned to them, and the city was ordered to assume the Jews' tax obligations. However, the order of expulsion

968 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIII/4 (2002)

to place itself in the strongest possible position.The consecration of a church on the site of the destroyed synagogue suited the Council's political needs perfectly: even if the Council were held to have acted illegally, no emperor would order them to

destroy a church to make way for the return of the Jews.30 If the Council acted

quickly, the completed church would make it all the more difficult for a new

emperor to mandate the return of the Jews and the recovery of their property.31 Apart from the political value of the construction, the veneration of Mary on

this site was intended to convey a religious message as well. Since the early Chris- tian era, sites of anti-Jewish violence have frequently been consecrated as Christian

holy sites.32 The appropriation of Jewish holy places as Christian shrines became

particularly pronounced, however, in the mid-fourteenth century following a rash of expulsions and massacres of the Jews within the Holy Roman Empire. In the wake of the violence, Christian shrines-usually to Christ or to theVirgin Mary- were often dedicated where the Jews' synagogues had once stood.Two recent studies find evidence for thirty-three churches and chapels dedicated on the sites of

Jewish synagogues within the empire between 1349 and 1520, almost all concen- trated within the southern territories of the empire.33 The concentration of such

dedications, in time and place, together with the Marian associations of such

shrines, suggests a deliberate linkage between the cult of the Virgin Mary and

anti-Jewish violence. The upturn in such dedications coincides not only with the intensification ofJewish persecutions within the empire in the mid-fourteenth cen-

tury, but persists into the early sixteenth century-a 170-year period that also marks a pronounced intensification of theological interest in and lay devotion to the cult of the Virgin Mary.

was not rescinded. Straus,Jewuish Life, 158-59; Rosemarie Schuder and Rudolf Hirsch, Der Gelbe Fleck: luhrzeln und Wirkungen des Judenhlasses in der deutschen Geschlichte (Cologne: R6derberg im

Pahl-Rugenstein, 1988), 302-3; Christopher S. Wood, "Ritual and the Virgin on the Column: The Cult of the Sch6ne Maria in Regensburg,"Journal of Ritual Studies 6 (1992): 93.

31"Gerhard B. Winkler, "Die Regensburger Wallfahrt zur Sch6nen Maria (1519) als reformatori- sches Problem," in Albrecht Altdorfer und seine Zeit, ed. Dieter Henrich (Regensburg: Mittelbayerische Druckerei und Verlagsgesellschaft, 1981), 104; Volkert, "Judengemeinde," 140; Schuh, "Gewalten des Wunders," 80.

31Gemeiner, Regensburgische Chronik, 4:370. 32Simon, "Christian Anti-Semitism," 155-56.

33J. M. Minty notes that from 1390 to 1520, churches were dedicated on the sites of synagogues in Heidelberg, Amberg, Ingolstadt, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Linz, Iglau, Cologne, Deutz, Eger, Jauer, Graz, Munich, Mainz, Coburg, Landshut, Schweidnitz, Striegau, Bamberg, Trent, Passau, Erfurt, Magdeburg, Wiener-Neustadt, Budweis, Regensburg, and again at Rothenburg ob der Tauber. J. M.

Minty, "Judengasse to Christian Quarter: The Phenomenon of the Converted Synagogue in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Holy Roman Empire," in Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400-1800, ed. Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 61. In addition, Hedwig Rockelein lists Christian shrines dedicated on the sites of Jewish synagogues in: Nuremberg (1349), Wiirzburg (1349), Bamburg (1349), Miltenberg (1429), Wertheim (1447), Halle a. d. Salle (1493), and WeiBenburg (1520). Hedwig Rickelein, "Marienverehrung und Judenfeindlichkeit in Mit- telalter und friiher Neuzeit," Maria in der Wlelt: Marienverehrung im Kontext der Sozialgeschichte 10.-18. Jahrhundert (Ziirich: Chronos, 1993), 280-83.


The Catholic church, in the wake of schism and dissension, actively promoted Marian devotion in the fifteenth century as a unifying influence within the church. Throughout Europe, heightened interest in the Virgin Mary was reflected both in the theological debate on the Immaculate Conception of Mary and, on a more

popular level, in the advent of the cult of the Rosary in the 1470s.34 Similar trends were also present in Germany, where devotion to the Virgin led to the dedication of a number of important Marian shrines in the late fifteenth century, particularly in southern Germany.35 In the sixteenth century, an estimated twelve thousand wonders were recorded at pilgrimage shrines in Bavaria alone.36 The apparent concentration of Marian devotionalism within the southernmost territories of the

empire during the late medieval and early modern periods may help explain the region's concentration of pilgrimage shrines dedicated on sites of anti-Jewish violence. As the accounts of the Regensburg pilgrimage to Schone Maria illustrate, the

Jewish associations of these sites were deemed to underscore Mary's unique status as the fulfillment of the Jewish prophecies, the Virgin who brought forth the promised Messiah. Founded in recompense for the Jews' alleged resistance to this truth and complicity in the death of Christ, such shrines affirmed Mary's central role in the Incarnation and the Passion of Christ.37 The nucleus of Christian shrines associated with anti-Jewish violence in these territories, therefore, reflects the concentration of Marian devotion within this region during the late medieval and early modern periods.

The extant accounts of the expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg and the construction of the chapel on the site indicate that, to the people of Regensburg, the land on which the synagogue had stood had been profaned by the Jewish wor-

ship focused there. The Jews were equated with the Devil in these accounts, and those who defended them merited eternal damnation as the Devil's servants.38 One

Regensburg miracle book concluded its account of the miracles performed by Sch6ne Maria with these words:

34Nicholas Perry and Loreto Echeverria, Under the Heel of Mary (London: Routledge, 1980), 19-26. 35Lionel Rothkrug has linked the increased popularity of the Virgin Mary in fifteenth-century

Germany to imperial efforts to promote Mary, the Immaculate Queen of Heaven, as the protectress of the empire. Lionel Rothkrug, "Religious Practices and Collective Perceptions: Hidden Homologies in the Renaissance and Reformation," Historical Reflections 7 (1980): 62, 93.

36Steven D. Sargent, "Miracle Books and Pilgrimage Shrines in Late Medieval Bavaria," Historical Reflections 13 (1986): 457-59. Rothkrug estimates that there were more than a thousand shrines in Germany at this time, over half of them located in southern Germany. Rothkrug, "Religious Practices," 205. See also Dieter Harmening, "Frankische Mirakelbiicher," Wiurzburger Diozesangeschichtsblitter 28 (1966): 25-241.

37Rickelein, "Marienverehrung," 292-94; Minty, "Judengasse," 80-84. See also, Johannes Heil and Rainer Kampling, eds., Maria-Tochlter Sion? Mariologie, Marien-Frmtnmigkeit und judenfeindschaft (Paderborn: Sch6ningh, 2001).

38Die wunderbarlichen zaichen, sigs. D3v-4r; Hieronymos Ell, Ein lied in Tolner melodei die Ausschaf- fung der]uden von Regensburg bezaichendt (Landshut: Johann Weyssenburger, 1519), Lied no. 339 in Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13. bis 16.jahrhundert, vol. 3, ed. Rochus von Lilienchron (Hil- descheim: Georg Olms, 1966): verse 24, pp. 335-36 (hereafter cited as In tolner melodei).


Pray diligently, you pious Christians, let not your sins confound you For, in this hour, Beelzebub- I mean, by that, the Jewish dogs- Rest by neither night nor day to break us with hardships- And the Jews' associates, too, who protect and defend them in their wickedness: Believe me, you are the Devil's servants.39

In this, the Regensburg sources were drawing on a long tradition of Christian polemic demonizing the Jews.40 The Jews, these accounts maintained, had stub- bornly refused to recognize Christ as their Messiah even though their own prophets confirmed the truth of this.41 But, according to these authors, the Jews were not merely blind and stubborn; they were willfully hostile to Christianity and dedicated to its destruction.42 Moses and David, one pilgrimage song asserts, had damned the Jews to hell for their impiety; it was no wonder then that they failed to heed the

prophets and had crucified God's son.43 The Jews' irrational hostility to the truth linked them in the public mind to that other inexorable enemy of Christ: the Devil. The Jews, therefore, were seen as the Devil's creatures, and their synagogues were

reputed as temples to the Antichrist.44 The consecration of Mary's chapel on the site where the Jews had practiced

their wickedness was therefore necessary to exorcise the evil that had once claimed the site and re-create it as a Christian holy place.45 On Good Friday, one pilgrimage song exulted, Christians would raise three crosses on the site of the Jews' burial

39Die 'iunderbarlichen zaichen, sigs. 1)3v-4r ("Pit euch mit fleyBl ir frumen Christen / Last euch ewr Sundt nit uberlisten / Den Beelzebub zu diser Stundt / Ich mayn darzu die Juden hundt / Wann sie nicht rasten nacht und tag / Wie sie uns brechten in ungemach / Die Juden veter auch dabey / Die sie

bschirmen und bschiizen frey / Und geben inn ir bolheyt recht/Glaub mir du bist des teuffels knecht"). 4()Elaine Pagels, The Oriqin of Satan (NewYork: Random House, 1995); Moshe Lazar,"The Lamb

and the Scapegoat: The Dehumanization of the Jews in Medieval Propaganda Imagery," in

Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis, ed. Sander L. Gilman and Steven T. Katz (New York: New York

University Press, 1991), 39-56.

41Sinmon, "Christian Anti-Semnitism," 138-39.

42Georg Harder, Wie die newe Capell zu der Schiinen Maria in Regenspurg Erstlich auff kommtnen ist

(Nuremberg:Jobst Gutknecht, 1519), sig. A3v (hereafter cited as Die newe Capell). 43Die newe Capell, sig. A3v ("Der Moises, ir halber got / David, wie es im psalter stat / habens ver-

fliicht bilB in die hell / wann es ist in kein weg nit fel / dai sie gottes son gecreuzigt hand / und glauben keins propheten mund").

44Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1943), 18-31, 59-60; Stefan Rohrbacher and Michael Schmidt,Judenbilder: Kulturgeschichte, ant(itidischer Mythen und antisemitischer 1Vorurteile (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 1991), 151-68; Christoph Daxelmiiller, "Volksfr6mmigkeit im Reformationszeitalter: Epochenschwelle oder Kontinuitit (am Beispiel Regensburgs)," in Reformation und Reichsstadt: Protestantisches Leben in Regensburg, ed. Hans Schwartz (Regensburg: Universititsverlag Regensburg, 1994), 109; Lester K. Little, "The Jews in Christian Europe," in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity, ed. Cohen, 288-89.


ground, reclaiming the land from those who had crucified the Messiah. "That may annoy the dogs," the song continued, "but they must atone for it; the Devil will receive them, and will give them their reward."46 The obliteration of the Jewish temple was both a cleansing and an act of penance, atoning for the city's prior toleration of the Jewish evil. According to one Regensburg miracle book, there was no greater sin than to shelter the Jews; therefore, "no city may ever have happiness, where the cursed Jews dwell."47 "The Jew never goes right," another pilgrimage song asserts, "nor correctly understands the prophets; therefore he is eternally unholy, and who gives him sanctuary is a bad Christian."48

Another pilgrimage song affirms that great sin had prevailed where the Jews dwelled, and for that God had punished the city. Now that the citizens had rallied to drive the Jews out, the city was blessed with great wonders.49 Once polluted by the Jews, the site was now holy. Grace streamed down from heaven there, tes-

tifying to Mary's glory. The place should smell of incense and gleam with orna- ments, one poet proclaimed; a great palace had to be constructed there to honor Christ's mother.50

According to these accounts, these wonders showed that Mary herself had chosen the Jews' holy place to vindicate her power and demonstrate her triumph over the false religion of the Jews.51 One pilgrimage song explains that the Jews had insulted the honor of Mary, "the beautiful maid," and now she brought justice down upon her enemies, presiding over God's judgment upon them.52 According to another miracle book, "wondrous signs" occurred daily on the spot where the

Regensburgers had cast down the Jews' houses and their synagogue, "in which they had daily disgraced, reviled and heavily blasphemed against our lord Jesus Christ and his worthy mother, the highly praised queen, the Schone Maria."53 The wondrous signs Mary revealed there also testified to the rectitude of the citizens' action in expelling the Jews.54 One chronicler noted that, although some Regensburgers had pitied the Jews, the revelation of Mary's power on that site confirmed the Jews' guilt in the eyes of the community.The plight of the Jews was heartbreaking, arous-

45R6ckelein, "Marienverehrung," 295-96; Minty, "Jndesngasse," 81; Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959); Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger:An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (NewYork: Praeger, 1966).

461! Tiolner melodei, verse 24, pp. 335-36. 47Die newe Capell, sigs. A3v-B 1r. 48Die newe Capell, sig. A3v ("Der Jud nie recht in sich wolt gan/noch die propheten recht verstan

/darumb er unselig ewig ist / und der in behaust ein b6ser Christ"). 49Hieronymos Ell, In Toller melodei (Regensburg, 1520), Lied no. 338 in Historischen Volkslieder, verse

2, p. 323 (hereafter cited as In Toller melodei). 5(Jakob Locher, Ad Formosam Virginem Mariam Ratisponae in Area Ivdaeorvm Expvlsorvm Gratiose

Residentem et Grandibvs Miracvlis Corvscantemn (Regensburg, 1520),verse 1, lines 13-24.

51Georg Harder, Ein andechtige ansprach wie die new Capell zu der Schonen Maria der hymel Konigin nd muiitter gottes des alnmechtigen in Regenspurg Erstlich auf kommen ist, nach Christi geburt MCCCCC und

xix.Jar (Regensburg, 1519), verses 8-9 (hereafter cited as Ein andechtige ansprach).

52In Tolner melodei,verse 6, p. 333. 531n disem biichlein seind begriffen die wunderbarlichen zaychen Beschehen zu Regenspurg zu der Schonen

Maria der mutter gottes (Nuremberg, 1519), sig. A2r. 54Schuh, "Gewalten des Wunders," 90, 94.


ing compassion in many Regensburgers; yet the wondrous signs revealed in the ghetto suppressed their pity.55

Mary's victory over her Jewish enemies was underscored by her epithet "Sch6ne," emphasizing her beauty and purity in the face of alleged Jewish slanders.56 The Jews, the Regensburgers alleged, had slandered the ever-virgin Mary as a common whore or dismissed her contemptuously as merely "a carpenter's wife."57 So that the pilgrims would not forget the Jews' insults against the Beautiful Virgin, Hubmaier, the newly appointed chaplain at the shrine, posted a panel in the courtyard of the chapel detailing the Jews' slanders against her.58 The allegations-and the public memorial of them-were doubtlessly aimed at fostering devotion to Schone Maria by fomenting outrage against the Jews. Such charges were not unique to Regensburg, but had been circulating in Christian Europe for generations. The allegations drew on a long-standing Christian belief that the Jews bore a

particular animus against the Virgin Mary.59 Christian belief in the Jews' hatred of Mary reflected, in part, the significance attached to the figure of Mary in late medieval piety. The role of Mary in human salvation and the respect properly due her formed an important line of demarcation dividing Christian from non-Christian.60o

Jews rejected the Christian belief in the virgin birth of Christ and the eternal purity of Mary as being both contrary to the natural order and unsupported by any stan- dards of scriptural interpretation Jewish scholarship was prepared to accept.61 Christians, however, saw Mary and the miracles associated with her as clearly pre- saged in the Jews' own scriptures. To Christians, the Jews' failure to recognize this was merely further evidence of the Jews' perverse wickedness.62 Jewish rejection of Mary's exalted status was shocking to prevailing Christian sensibilities, and thus all manner of outrages against the Mother of God were attributable to them.

The Regensburgers saw Schone Maria's wonders as a testament to the achieve- ment of God's purpose in Mary. To them, her appearance on the ruins of the destroyed synagogue proclaimed nothing less than the nullification of the entire Jewish faith. The wondrous signs she worked in the Jews' holy place revealed that she was, in fact, the fulfillment of the prophecies to her people. In the eyes of Regensburg's Christian community, the Jews had earned the wrath of God for their failure to heed the words of his prophets.63 Mary was the fulfillment of those

55Gemeiner, Regensburgische Chronik, 4:359. 56Stahl, "Wallfahr," 55-57; Die ne'we Capell, sig. Clv. The title also linked the new shrine to other

popular Marian pilgrimage sites at Ingolstadt and Altotting. Soergel, W/ondrous in His Saints, 53-54; Achim Hubel,"Die'Sch6ne Maria' von Regensburg.Wallfahrten-Gnadenbilder-Ikonographie," 850 Jahre Kollegiatstift St.Johann in Regensburg, 1127-1977 (Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1977), 202.

57Die neue Capell, sig. Clv; Ein andechtige ansprach, verse 1, lines 4-5. 58Winkler, "Die Regensburger Wallfahrt," 108; Schuh, "Gewalten des Wunders," 94. 59Wenninger, Man bedarf keinerJuden, 28. 60R6ckelein, "Marienverehrung," 279. 61Simon, "Christian Anti-Semitism," 142-43. 62Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans.

James I. Porter (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 83; Simon, "Christian Anti-Semitism," 145-47. 63Die newe Capell, sigs. A2r, A3v, C v; Simon, "Christian Anti-Semitism," 138-39.


prophecies-she was the virgin foretold by Isaiah, who brought forth the Emman- uel to supplant the Jewish faith.64 Thus, the Regensburg miracle books and pilgrimage songs repeatedly portray Mary as the culmination of God's work among the Jews. She was the "daughter of Zion," the "Rose of Jericho," the channel

through which the Messiah was finally revealed to his people.65 One poem hailed

Sch6ne Maria as the mother of the Messiah, a heroine descended from and prefig- ured in the Jewish heroines of the Old Testament:

They [the Jews] offend not just God but also the gentle Maria, who gave birth to the Messiah and was figured in Judith, and in Esther, who advised Ahasuerus and saved her people. Maria, too, gave us life, but even greater grace.66

According to these accounts, after Sch6ne Maria had brought forth the Messiah, there was nothing left to the faith of the Jews. They had rejected the message revealed in Christ through Sch6ne Maria, for which they were justly cursed by God and all pious Christians.67 The Jews had, in effect, forfeited their claims to the place Sch6ne Maria now graced with her wonders. As the culmination of the prophecies foretold to her people, Sch6ne Maria was the natural heir to the Jewish lands.

By the time the chapel was finally dedicated on that land in March 1519, pilgrims were already arriving at the site to invoke the aid of Sch6ne Maria. Chroni- clers were in agreement that, in the early years of the pilgrimage, pilgrims flocked to Sch6ne Maria's shrine in extraordinary numbers. On Pentecost in 1520, an estimated twenty-seven thousand people were in attendance at the chapel, with another fifty thousand present on St. George's Day. Between St. George's Day (April) and St. Martin's Day (November) 1520, approximately fifteen hundred processions had made their way to Regensburg.68 During the years 1519 through 1522, an estimated 25,374 masses were said in the chapel, for an average of

twenty-three masses every day.69 For many, the cult was suspect because of its very popularity. Pilgrims were said

to flock to the chapel apparently without forethought, abandoning their responsi- bilities and setting out for Regensburg without adequate food or clothing, sometimes with their tools still in their hands, as if some unseen power propelled them

64Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:22-23. 65Ein andechtige ansprach, verse 1, lines 7-9; Die newe Capell, sig. A3r-v. 66Die newe Capell, sig. A3v ("Dann sie schelten got nit allein, / sonder auch die Mariam zart, /

von der Messias geboren ward, / welche auch die Judith figurirt / und Hester, die Asvero riet / und irem volk fristet das leben. / Das hat uns auch Maria geben, / noch grollere gnad, als ich das find").

67Simnon, "Christian Anti-Semitism," 138-39, 150. 68Widmann, Chronik von Regensburg, 36. 69Widmann, Chronik von Regensburg, 34; Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 56-57.


toward Regensburg.70 When asked why they journeyed to Regensburg, pilgrims were liable to respond that they were carried there "by the Spirit."71 On feast days, the crush of pilgrims could create havoc in the chapel. People fainted, it was said, and so many priests sought to say mass at the chapel's altars that often one priest started saying mass even before another had finished.72 To manage the crowds, the City Council asked members of the local monastic communities to circulate in the chapel and help keep order.73

Even greater disorder was said to prevail outside the chapel. Pilgrims prayed before the large stone statue of the Virgin Mary in the chapel's courtyard (fig. 1). Some threw themselves on the ground before it; others sang and danced around it. Many pilgrims wept.74 In this highly charged atmosphere, a mood of apocalyptic expectation sometimes prevailed. Hysterical men and women, it was said, could be heard prophesying the coming of the last days.75

In the eyes of many observers, the pilgrims' behavior was unseemly, an offense against the proper reverence due to God, and a threat to the social order he had ordained. Even the City Council was troubled by reports of the pilgrims' behavior and took steps to try to rein in their excesses.76 While the Catholic City Council saw in the uncontrolled behavior of the pilgrims merely an excess of folk piety, Protestant critics saw something quite different: control by the Devil. The pilgrims were not simply out of control; they were under the sway of a diabolical power. None of these critics denied that the miracles reported at Regensburg were genu- ine; they simply denied that the Virgin Mary was the cause of them. The Devil, it was said, was just as capable of working wonders to deceive the simpleminded.77

Martin Luther saw the pilgrimage as all the Devil's work: "to strengthen greed, to create a false and fictitious faith, to weaken the parish churches, to mul- tiply taverns and harlotry, to lose money and working time to no purpose, and to lead ordinary people by the nose."78 Martin Bucer likewise attacked the pilgrimage to Sch6ne Maria as the work of the Antichrist. The Devil, Bucer said, sought

7"Wilhelmn Rem, Cronica neuwer geschichten, 1512-1527, in Die Clironiken d de deutschcen Stiidte omn 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, bd. 25 (G6ttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 131-32; Sebastian Franck, Clironica (1536; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), 260; Martin

Luther,"Luther an Biirgermeister und Rat der Stadt Regensburg," 26 August 1523, in D. Martin Luthers Werke, 4th ed. (Weimar: H. B6hlaus Nachfolger, 1933), 3:141-42.

71Harmening, "Frankische Mirakalbiicher," 135.

72Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 56-58. 73Gemeiner, Regensburgische Chronik, 4:392-93.

74Gemeiner, Regensburgische Chronik, 4:385. See Michael Ostendorfer's woodcut depicting this behavior at fig. 1.

75Gemeiner, Regensburgische Chronik, 4:392-94. 76Gemeiner, Regensburgische Chronik, 4:385. 77LutIhers Werke, 3:142.

78Martin Luther, "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate" (1520), trans. Charles M. Jacobs in Luther's Works, American Edition, ed. James Atkinson (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 44:185-89.


Figure 1. Michael Ostendorfer, Pilgrimage to the Schone Maria of Regensburg (Coburg, 1520), from Der deutsche Einblatt-holzschnitt in der ersten Hiilfte des XVI. Jahrhunderts, ed. Max

Geisburg (Munich: H. Schmidt, 1923)


to pervert the Christian faith by inducing people to flock to such shrines, as if God were present in one place and not in another.79

Like Luther, many Protestant critics were troubled by the threat to social order

posed by the pilgrims' leaving their jobs and masters on apparently irrational, unau- thorized pilgrimages. This uncontrollable behavior was also a sign of the Devil's work in the eyes of Sebastian Franck. According to Franck, peasants walked out of the fields towards Regensburg with their tools still in their hands as if they were bewitched or possessed. In Franck's mind, this could only be the work of the Devil, not the Mother of Christ.80

Such criticisms formed a favorite charge of sixteenth-century Protestant

polemicists against Catholic pilgrimages.81 Allegations of demonic influence had

been, and would continue to be, leveled against other pilgrimage sites.82 The pilgrimage to Sch6ne Maria, however, came in for particular abuse, perhaps because its fame and popularity in the early years of the Reformation era made it a readily identifiable target for Protestant attack. However, Sch6ne Maria's chapel also had

something that distinguished it in the eyes of its critics: it still had the taint of the

Jews on the place. According to Schone Maria's partisans, the presence of the accursed Jews had drawn down the Virgin's power in the first instance, remaking the site into a holy shrine. According to Protestant critics, however, the place was still infected with the Jews' demonic influence.The ruin of the Jews' holy place was once again occupied by a supernatural visitor, but this time the resident was Satan, the Jews' supposed master. Only the Devil, the Protestants suggested, would bless

ground once occupied by the accursed Jews.83 The pilgrimage to Sch6ne Maria therefore had to be false, for nothing of God could ever have been found where the

Jews dwelled. Protestant attacks on the pilgrimage to Sch6ne Maria, therefore, buttressed the

favorite charge of demonic influence over the pilgrims with the diabolical contamination of the Jews. In a 1523 letter to the Regensburg City Council, Martin Luther made this point explicit. According to Luther, the pilgrimage chapel had to be leveled because the Devil now occupied the Jews' place:

79Martin Bucer, "Martin Butzers an ein Christlichen Rath und Gemeyn der Statt Weissenberg Summary seiner Predig daselbst gethon," in Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften, ed. Robert Stupperich (Paris: GiitersloherVerlagshaus, 1960), 1:110-12.

8()Franck, Chronica, 260.

81Daxelmiiller, "Volksfr6mmigkeit," 111; Wolfgang Briickner, "Forschungsprobleme der Satano-

logie und Teufelserzahlungen," and Rudolf Schenda, "Hieronymous Rauscher und die protestan- tisch-katholische Legendenpolemik," in Volkserzdhlung und Reformation: Ein Handbuch zur Tradierung und

Funktion von Erziihlstoffen und Erzdiilliteratur im Protestantismus, ed. Wolfgang Briickner (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1974), 179-259, 393-417.

82Charles Zika, "Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany," Past & Present 118 (1988): 57-59; Edith Turner and Victor Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture:Anthropological Perspectives (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1978), 31.

83j. M. Minty concludes that the conversion of Jewish structures to Christian religious purposes suggests that Christians did not believe the sites to be permanently "contaminated" by their Jewish origins. However, Minty does not address the comments of Protestant writers who made precisely this charge with respect to the shrine of Schiine Maria at Regensburg. See Minty, "Judengasse," 76-86.


... the Devil, after the Jews were expelled, set himself up in their place and works false miracles in the highly-honored name of Mary and carries away you and many others. Now, if he has the power to subvert the names of God's Majesty, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, how should he not be able to subvert the name of Mary or some lesser saint?84

According to Luther, it was "a sure sign" of the Devil that people came to Schone Maria's chapel so "impetuously." If the pilgrims had, in fact, been moved by the

Holy Spirit instead of the Devil, they would have stayed home instead of running off in disobedience to their masters.85

Likewise, the Protestant chronicler Caspar Goldwurm, writing in the mid-sixteenth century, recounted how the Devil had set himself up in Regensburg in the

place of the Jews:

In the year 1516, Dr. Balthasar Hubmaier of Regensburg frequently preached against the Jews, which moved the Christian government to

expel the Jews and destroy their houses and synagogue to the ground. While this was a Christian undertaking and work, the Devil set himself up in the place from which the Jews were expelled. However, he did not abandon his old, cunning style. Rather, he worked through the aforesaid Dr. Balthasar so that he would build and erect a mighty temple in the honor of the Sch6ne Maria on the site of the expulsion of the Jews and their destroyed synagogue, where people from far-off lands would come

running in search of mercy and help like mad and senseless people.86

The Devil, Goldwurm alleged, was lurking in the Jews' place, looking for an avenue through which to lead Christians into idolatry and error. Goldwurm reminded his readers that although the Devil operated through the Jews, he could

easily set up his false worship among Christians if given the opportunity.87

84Luthers Werke, 3:141-42 ("der teuffel, nach dem die Juden vertrieben sind, sich selbs an ihre Statt geseft und durch den hochgelobten namen Maria falsche zeichen thutt und euch sampt vielen andern betrugt. Denn so er die macht hatt, das er auch gottlicher maiestet namen, Christus namen und des heiligen geists namen thar und kan fur wenden, wie sollt er denn nicht Marien namen odder eins geringen heiligen namen auff werffen?"). For a discussion of Luther's attitudes toward the Jews, see Steven Rowan, "Luther, Bucer, and Eck on the Jews," Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985): 79-90.

85Luthers Werke, 3:141-42. 86Caspar Goldwurm, Wnderwverck und wvunderzeichen Buch. Darinne alle furnemste Gottliche, geistliche,

himlische, elementische,jrdische vnd teuflische Wunderwerck, so sich in solchem allem von Anfange der Welt Schopfung biss auff vnserjetzige Zeit, zutragen vnd begeben haben, kurtzlich vnnd ordentlich verfasset sein, der Gestalt von nie gedruck worden (Frankfurt am Main: Dauidem Zephelium, 1557), sig. X4v ("Im Jar 1516 prediget D. Bal- thasar Hiimenr zu Regenspurg / hafftig wider die Jiiden / dadurch ward ein Erbare Christliche Obrigkeit bewegt / die Jiiden zu vertreiben / waren ihnen ihre Heuser und Snnagoga in grund und bodem abge- brochen. Welches / wiewohl es ein Christlich flirnemen und werck war / und stellet sich der Teuffel / als w6lt er in dem / daB die Jiiden vertreiben wurden / an dem ort weichen / Jedoch font er sein alte arglistige art nicht lassen/sondern er bearbeitet sich durch obgemelten D. Balthasar dahin /dafl er an dis Statt der vertribenen Jiiden / und ihrer abgebrochenen Snnagoga / ein gewaltigen Tempel / in der ehr der Schonen Maria genannt / erbawen und auffrichten lieB / dahin die Leuth aul ferren Landen / als tolle und unsinnige Leuth / lieffen/genad und hiilff da zu suchen.")

87Goldwurm, Wunderwerck, sig. W4r.

978 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIII/4 (2002)

The pilgrims at Regensburg were in thrall ofJewish black magic, according to another Protestant tract. In a 1523 pamphlet criticizing the pilgrimage to theVirgin Mary at Grimmenthal, a fictional peasant and an artisan speculate concerning the cause of the popularity of the pilgrimage to Schone Maria at Regensburg.The artisan recounts a frightening story about how Jewish sorcerers had been known to use animal hearts to trigger spontaneous mass movements of swine. The artisan hints ominously that the Jews had been performing similar magic with human hearts, drawing people to Regensburg in droves.88

In these accounts, the Jews manipulate unsuspecting Christians just as they had been said to control the Christian economy in the earlier Regensburg polemics against the Jews. Christians, in these accounts, had forfeited control over themselves to the Jews and to their diabolical master. Thus, it was the pilgrims' apparent lack of control at the shrine that came in for particular attack. Most of this behavior was focused on a feature apparently unique to Schone Maria's shrine: the imposing stone statue of the ImmaculateVirgin89 mounted on a column in the chapel's public square. Michael Ostendorfer's woodcut (fig. 1) depicts pilgrims praying to the image and falling to the ground before it. Some of the pilgrims are shown embrac-

ing the column, craning to touch the statue. Other reports describe the pilgrims engaging in wild dances around the column.The pilgrims evidently imitated each other, with the behavior of some encouraging others to engage in even more ecstatic displays of devotion.

The pilgrims' behavior before the statue was roundly denounced. Many critics may have known of the pilgrimage only from Ostendorfer's controversial woodcut, which was widely circulated by the City Council. Albrecht Diirer owned a copy, on which he noted his disapproval of this "dishonor" to God's "worthy mother."''9 Franck likewise denounced the pilgrims who fell to the ground before the image of Sch6ne Maria "as if they had been struck by lightning." According to Franck, the

pilgrims thought it was the work of God and foolishly emulated each other in the belief that it was a necessary sign of divine favor.91 Even Hubmaier was disturbed by pilgrims dancing around the image. The pilgrims told him that they had seen others dancing and had been moved by a "sudden upsurge of the blood" to do the same. Hubmaier was so disturbed by the pilgrims' conduct that he asked a physician friend to provide an explanation.The doctor's diagnosis was "nervous irritation."92

The pilgrims, in short, couldn't help themselves. The critics agreed that the

pilgrims had surrendered their good judgment and their self-restraint to some other

88Eyn gesprech ziwyschen vyer Personen wye sie eyn getzengk haben, von der Walfart ym Grinmmetal, was

fur unradt odder biiberey daraus entstanden sey (Erfurt, 1523), sig. A4r.

89This image, depicted in Michael Ostendorfer's woodcut at fig. 1, did not conform to the iconography of Sch6ne Maria, but to the form of Mary as the Immaculate Queen of Heaven.The statue had been commissioned for the city's cathedral in 1516 and was probably originally displayed inside the cathedral before being moved to the square in 1519.Wood, "Virgin on the Column," 98.

9?Wood, "Virgin on the Column," 89. 91Franck, Chronica, 260.

92Bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier, 65.


power. The source of this power seemed to be focused around the statue. Outdoor

freestanding columnar statues of religious figures were apparently exceptional in this period. One recent study of the Schone Maria cult suggests that such statues were rare because they were associated, in the public's imagination, with pagan idolatry. Woodcuts of the period routinely picture the ancient Israelites dancing around the image of the golden calf mounted on a column.93 However, the association with the story of the golden calf94 also evoked a centuries-old anti-Jewish polemic. Christian polemicists drew on the biblical account of the Israelites' idola-

try to contrast the allegedly pure spirituality of the Christian faith with the supposed carnal superstition of the Jews. The Israelites' worship of the golden calf, it was alleged, revealed the Jews to be sunk in ignorance and carnality, forsaking the word of God for the worship of false idols.95 The pilgrims' ecstatic displays before the Virgin's statue, therefore, crossed the line from legitimate worship into idolatry and, in the process, revealed them to be no better than the Jews. Like the Jews, the

pilgrims had forgotten the proper reverence due to God and had abandoned themselves to base revelry and excess. In the eyes of the shrine's critics, then, the con-

taminating influence ofJewish worship could still in some form be felt at the site.

By 1525, the pilgrimage to the shrine of Sch6ne Maria was essentially at an

end.96 Her church was eventually torn down to make room for a new structure, and her icon was lost.97 The unfinished stone church that was to have replaced the wooden pilgrimage chapel was eventually completed as Regensburg's first Protes- tant church in 1542.98 Although pilgrimage to other Marian shrines in Regensburg enjoyed a resurgence during the Counter-Reformation, the veneration of Sch6ne Maria was not revived.99

The late medieval world from which Schone Maria originated saw the supernatural fully operating within the natural world and revealed, sometimes, in certain

uniquely focused loci of power. For the Christians of Regensburg, one such site of

otherworldly power could be found in the heart of their city, in the ruins of the

Jewish synagogue.The synagogue became the focus of all the resentments and fears

93Wood, "Virgin on the Column," 90. 94Moses retreated for forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai, where God revealed the Law to

him. Despairing of Moses and his God, the Israelites beseeched Moses' brother, Aaron, to create a new

god for them.The Israelites melted down their gold into the form of a calf, which they worshiped with

feasting and revelry. Moses destroyed the idol, and in punishment for their sin, three thousand Israelites were put to death. Exod. 32:1-28.

95Pier Cesare Bori, The Golden Calf and the Origins of the Anti-Jewish Controversy, trans. David Wood

(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990); Simon, "Christian Anti-Semitism," 142-43, 146-47.

96Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 61. 97Stahl,

"Wallfahrt,"' 79-80, 86.

98Wood, "Virgin on the Column," 104. The much-maligned statue of the Virgin in the chapel square was destroyed in 1543.

99In the mid-eighteenth century, the Regensburg clergy began promoting a new devotion to a

Sch6ne Maria at the Franciscan cloister of St. Kassian. Hubel, "'Sch6ne Maria' von Regensburg," 206- 8. Regensburg's many shrines continue to make it a popular destination for pilgrims. The history of pilgrimage shrines in the diocese of Regensburg, with particular emphasis on the post-Reformation era, is traced in Hans J. Utz, Wallfahrten im Bistumn Regensburg (Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1981).


the Regensburgers had once directed against the Jews, and they invested the site with all the evils they imagined to be associated with the Jews and their supposed demonic master.The Jews' holy place thus became a source of spiritual corruption to the community, an evil to be exorcised and remade into a font of divine grace. The wonders revealed on that site invested it with a special sanctity in the eyes of

Sch6ne Maria's devotees. But, for her critics, the profane influence of the original occupants was still manifest in the behavior of her faithful.

This continuing belief in the links between the natural and supernatural worlds attests to the power of the impulses that first gave rise to the cult of Sch6ne Maria. The contemporary books and ballads both celebrating and condemning the pilgrimage share a common animus against the Jews and a heavy reliance on the sad legacy of anti-Jewish Christian polemic. The connections drawn by both Sch6ne Maria's proponents and critics between the alleged unholy influence of the Jews over the site and the devotion to theVirgin displayed there suggest a common link in the public imagination between anti-Jewish hatreds and Marian devotionalism. To Sch6ne Maria's followers, the revelation of the Virgin's power on the ruins of a destroyed Jewish sanctuary testified to Mary's unique role in human salvation as the vessel through which the Messiah was revealed to his people and the supposedly false religion of the Jews was forever supplanted. Mary was the culmination of God's work among the Jews and the only rightful heir to the site once polluted by their sin. The Jewish associations of the shrine were equally significant to its Protestant critics, for to them, the Jews' presence offered particularly cogent proof both that the site was cursed and that the pilgrims who flocked there were sunk in the same base superstition for which they believed the Jews themselves had been forever damned. For both Sch6ne Maria's devotees and detractors, then, the ruins of the Jewish sanctuary, and the attitudes that led to its destruction, gave powerful witness to the interaction of the divine and the profane in the creation of sacred space.

the virgin mary against the jews

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