<p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>(SPAIN).</strong></span></p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>[The Legend of Sacao and Abisain]. </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>Manuscript</strong></span> on paper. One leaf, written on both sides in Spanish in an early-modern hand. </p>
<p>Minor edge losses and surface wear. Folio.</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>n.p n.d.</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p> Early written witness to an anti-Jewish devotional legend centered on the Jews named Sacao and Abisain, connected to the shrine later known as the Cristo de la Luz in Toledo (formerly the mosque of Bab al-Mardum). </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>The narrative here is set in Visigothic and early Reconquest Toledo and accuses two Jews of violently desecrating a hidden Christian image. A miracle allegedly reveals the act, leading to the punishment of the Jews and the Christian reconsecration of the building. The episode is presented as the origin of the shrine’s subsequent cult, and of the name “Cristo de la Luz.” </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>The legend belongs to a broader corpus of early-modern anti-Jewish miracle tales, in which Jews are portrayed as secret enemies of Christian sacred objects and are retroactively blamed for imagined acts of sacrilege. These narratives proliferated especially in post-Expulsion Spain, where the absence of living Jewish communities facilitated the unchecked growth of hostile legend and devotional propaganda. </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>Modern scholarship is clear that, despite its medieval setting, this story is not of medieval documentary origin but belongs to later popular folklore. Eugenio Olavarría y Huarte, Tradiciones de Toledo (1880), treats the episode as a product of Toledo’s later legendary tradition and explicitly notes that the people influenced by this very story came to call the shrine Cristo de la Luz, “y así se le entiende vulgarmente” confirming that the name itself reflects popular reinterpretation rather than medieval historical usage. No medieval chronicle or archival record documents this episode, and its narrative form corresponds closely to early-modern Counter-Reformation anti-Jewish storytelling. </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>This manuscript constitutes an early textual witness to the emergence of this anti-Jewish legend in written form, documenting the moment when a hostile post-Expulsion oral tradition entered manuscript transmission. Since the legend originated in the early modern period and did not exist in medieval times, this manuscript dates from the same period as the legend itself and therefore represents one of the earliest witnesses to it. It is of particular significance for the study of Christian-Jewish polemic, the afterlife of medieval accusation motifs in early-modern Spain, and the construction of anti-Jewish memory in the absence of Jewish communities.</p>
![<p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>(SPAIN).</strong></span></p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>[The Legend of Sacao and Abisain]. </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>Manuscript</strong></span> on paper. One leaf, written on both sides in Spanish in an early-modern hand. </p>
<p>Minor edge losses and surface wear. Folio.</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>n.p n.d.</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p> Early written witness to an anti-Jewish devotional legend centered on the Jews named Sacao and Abisain, connected to the shrine later known as the Cristo de la Luz in Toledo (formerly the mosque of Bab al-Mardum). </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>The narrative here is set in Visigothic and early Reconquest Toledo and accuses two Jews of violently desecrating a hidden Christian image. A miracle allegedly reveals the act, leading to the punishment of the Jews and the Christian reconsecration of the building. The episode is presented as the origin of the shrine’s subsequent cult, and of the name “Cristo de la Luz.” </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>The legend belongs to a broader corpus of early-modern anti-Jewish miracle tales, in which Jews are portrayed as secret enemies of Christian sacred objects and are retroactively blamed for imagined acts of sacrilege. These narratives proliferated especially in post-Expulsion Spain, where the absence of living Jewish communities facilitated the unchecked growth of hostile legend and devotional propaganda. </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>Modern scholarship is clear that, despite its medieval setting, this story is not of medieval documentary origin but belongs to later popular folklore. Eugenio Olavarría y Huarte, Tradiciones de Toledo (1880), treats the episode as a product of Toledo’s later legendary tradition and explicitly notes that the people influenced by this very story came to call the shrine Cristo de la Luz, “y así se le entiende vulgarmente” confirming that the name itself reflects popular reinterpretation rather than medieval historical usage. No medieval chronicle or archival record documents this episode, and its narrative form corresponds closely to early-modern Counter-Reformation anti-Jewish storytelling. </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>This manuscript constitutes an early textual witness to the emergence of this anti-Jewish legend in written form, documenting the moment when a hostile post-Expulsion oral tradition entered manuscript transmission. Since the legend originated in the early modern period and did not exist in medieval times, this manuscript dates from the same period as the legend itself and therefore represents one of the earliest witnesses to it. It is of particular significance for the study of Christian-Jewish polemic, the afterlife of medieval accusation motifs in early-modern Spain, and the construction of anti-Jewish memory in the absence of Jewish communities.</p>](/img/aHR0cHM6Ly9iaWRzcGlyaXQtaW1hZ2VzLmdsb2JhbC5zc2wuZmFzdGx5Lm5ldC9rZXN0ZW5iYXVtL2Nsb25lZC1pbWFnZXMvMTIzMjI5LzAwMS8wMDEuanBn.HnCVBChEiF2A5-GupT48XQ)
