Medieval texts presented enemy bloodshed in sacred places as cleansing pollution

Evidence

The blood shed in the sacred precincts has, paradoxically, a purifying effect: as the Caxton Siege puts it, “It was wel couenable [suitable] thyng that… theyr blood sholde also be shedd, where as they had spred the ordure of mescreaunce” (274.22–26). — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 246

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends ‘On Sacrifice’ — this is the purifying-blood logic of holy war, the enemy’s own blood washing away their prior blasphemies, a Christian mirror of sacrificial purification.
• SEED: Could feed an essay on how purification-through-others’-blood operates across religious violence — crusade chronicles, Inquisition, pogroms — as a recurring rhetorical template.