How to Start a Pogrom: The Lepers’ Plot of 1321 in France and Aragon
In 1320, King Philip V of France suppressed the "Shepherds," a rural movement that had tried to restart the crusades by massacring communities of Jews and Muslims across France and Aragon. In 1321, he approved the executions and expulsions of those same communities, this time for colluding with lepers to poison wells and "infect people […]