ANTI-JEWISH MOTIFS IN THE POETRY OF BLESSED WŁADYSŁAW OF GIELNIÓW (c. 1440-1505) Rafał Wójcik As Majer Bałaban wrote, “the period of Władysław Jagiełło’s reign was not the happiest for the Jews in Cracow and for the Polish Jews in general.” 1 In Western Europe, the persecution of Jews intensified in the second half of the fifteenth century and the news of it, together with the hostile attitudes, were increasingly pervading Poland, which had hitherto been relatively tolerant to the Jews. The impact of western atrocities and the anti-Jewish writings of Christian authors led also in Poland to accusations against the Jews for desecrating the host (Poznań, 1399), so the kings started to refuse or to take back privileges. Accusations of host desecration were a common pretext for massacres and expulsions throughout the Middle Ages. Jewish bankers and usurers had been earning their living that way almost from the eleventh century onwards. It is known that there were twenty Jews lending at interest in Cracow in the fourteenth century, and later this number grew. Not only townsmen and nobility were running into debts, but also kings like Kazimierz the Great, Louis I the Great, or Jadwiga of Poland. The situation continued into the fifteenth century. This frustrating financial dependence on Jews, along with the increasingly hostile attitudes coming from abroad, created an explosive mixture, which became particularly dangerous in the middle of the fifteenth century. Apart from the anti-Jewish activity of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, prominent bishop and politician, a significant role in fanning the aversion against the Jews was played by a distinguished and charismatic Italian reformer from the Franciscan order, called “the scourge of the Judeans, Turks, and heretics” – John Capistran. 2 1 Majer Bałaban, Historja Żydów w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu 1304-1868 (The History of Jews in Cracow and in Kazimierz 1304-1868), vol. 1 (Cracow: „Nadzieja”, 1931), 29. 2 On Capistran’s arrival and stay in Cracow, see: Kamil Kantak, Bernardyni polscy (The Polish Observants), vol. 1 (1453-1572) (Lviv: Nakładem Prowincji Polskiej OO. Bernardynów, 1933), 1-25; Bałaban, Historja, 40-65; see also Klasztory bernardyńskie w Polsce w jej granicach historycznych (The Observant Monasteries in Poland in Its Historical Borders), ed. Hieronim Eugeniusz Wyczawski (Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: Wydawnictwo Bernardynów Calvarianum, 1985).