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>Ritual Crime?
>It was precisely when Jewish magic spread across late medieval Europe that reports of the crime of ritual murder began to appear more frequently. Such reports ranged from the theft of consecrated hosts – with the growth of devotion to the Eucharist, especially in the 13th century, attacks on tabernacles and the theft of hosts became more common – to blasphemies against Jesus Christ and even the abduction of children to acquire of human blood in order to perform enchantments
>It is common among certain historiographers to resort to interpreting such accusations against Jews as a way for the Church to confiscate their assets, out of pure material interest, and as a way for kings and nobles to use the “Jewish Danger” as a scapegoat for political and economic. First, it must be said that such an interpretation is tainted with Marxism, as it tends to understand religious phenomena exclusively from an economic perspective
>On the other hand, it is untrue that the Church acted largely driven by material interests. Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261) prohibited the inquisition from judging any case of witchcraft, reserving only cases of heresy. For the Church, the fight against heretics was more important than the fight against sorcerers and wizards, which proves that the inquisitorial arm should, by papal determination, dedicate itself more to purging bad doctrines than simply confiscating sorcerers' property and taking care of magical practices. On the other hand, the repressive power of the inquisition did not follow a desire to condemn anyone to increase the Church's income. The resumption of Roman law in the 13th century and the use of the Corpus Iuris Civilis by inquisitors required the production of evidence and the examination and re-examination of facts. Inquisitors had to follow a strict legal standard
