A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel

There was in Asia, in a great city,

Among Christian folk, a street of Jewry,

Sustained by a lord of that country

For foul usury and lucre of villainy,

Hateful to Christ and to his company;

And through the street men might ride and wend

For it was free and open at either end.

A little school of Christian folk there stood

Down at the farther end, in which there were

Many children, born of Christian blood.

—from “The Prioress’s Tale,”

The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer