The case of the “Holy Child of La Guardia” was one of the most famous cases of blood libel against Jews in medieval Europe, and probably the most famous one in all of Iberia. Much like the tale of Hugh of Lincoln, mentioned in Chaucer’s The Prioress’ Tale who was supposedly murdered at the hands of Jews, that of the Holy Child of La Guardia involves the murder of a Christian child by (in this case) conversos, or Jews who were recently converted to Christianity, by kidnapping him from near the main Cathedral of the city of Toledo, Spain, and the scourging him, crowning him with a crow of thorns, and crucifying him in imitation of Jesus of Nazareth, at a mock trial held on Good Friday in order to use sorcery against the Spanish Inquisition as a means of revenge.
Afterwards, the Jewish murderers supposedly rode back into to the city of Toledo in order to cast their magic to poison the Christians, when the heart, which was hidden in their carriage, either started to drip blood behind them and/or start glowing in the dark, which led people to discovering the murder of the child, whereupon he was beatified by the commonfolk as a saint. The Jews were then put to death by the Inquisition in 1491.
This, obviously, has parallels with much earlier the story of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, an English boy who was supposedly murdered by Jews in 1255 as part of a Jewish plot. And, earlier, in 1144, a similar event supposedly occurred in England as well, in the case of William of Norwich, whose death marks the first recorded case of Jewish blood libel accusations.
The events at Toledo led to an increased persecution of Spanish Jews under the Inquisition and actually prevented people of Jewish descent from occupying high positions in the clergy under limpieza de sangre (blood purity) laws.
