Medieval Drama as Documentation: Real Presence in the Croxton Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament

In the fifteenth-century East Anglian play, The Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament, five Jews desecrate a host to challenge the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation. In the play's image of Jewish characters, fifteenth-century English Christianity constructed an ethnic, religious, and cultural alterity. A Jewish merchant, Jonathas, bribes a Christian merchant, Aristorius, to steal a consecrated host from a local church. Five Jewish characters then stab the host, nail it to a pillar, boil it, and bake it in an oven over a fire. In this last trial, the oven bursts open to reveal the image of Christ as a bloody child. At the sight of the Christ, and upon hearing his reproach, the Jews confess and are baptized into the Christian faith.

Medieval Drama as Documentation: Real Presence in the Croxton Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament Academic Article