[10] The clerical usury scandal in Brussels was the immediate context of the accusations of host desecration,[6] a common anti-Semitic canard in medieval Europe, with wafers that Jews had supposedly tried to profane often said to have been miraculously spared from harm.

[1] The version of the allegations attested from 1403 was that a rich Jew from Enghien wanted to obtain some consecrated hosts to profane, and bribed a male Jewish convert to Christianity from Leuven to steal some.

His widow passed the stolen hosts to the Jews of Brussels, where in the synagogue on Good Friday 1370 some tried to stab the wafers with their daggers, causing blood to pour forth.

[1] The Duke of Brabant,[fn 1] on the woman's testimony, ordered the stabbers burnt at the stake and the remaining Jews banished, with their property confiscated.

A pamphlet by Charles Potvin (under the pseudonym Dom Liber) gave rise to a violent controversy with the young priest Hyacinthe De Bruyn, which was also fueled by imminent elections.

After the Second World War, in light of the mass murder of Belgian Jews during The Holocaust, the anti-semitic elements of the cult were de-emphasised.

[1] On November 16, 2006 at the inauguration of the exhibit Menorah in the Cathedral by Jean Paul Leon presented by the Jewish Museum of Belgium, Monsignor Jozef De Kesel addressed the attendees and Albert Guigui as Chief Rabbi of the Great Synagogue of Europe and apologised for the commemoration of the Brussels massacre on the windows of the Cathedral.