In 1694 Lazar Abeles, a Prague Jew, was accused of murdering his son, Shimon, who had wanted to be baptized. The murder qualifi ed as a crime stemming from ‘hatred for the Christian faith’ (ex odio fi dei). The inhabitants of Prague became fascinated by the case, and as more journalists wrote about the boy’s death tensions between Christians and Jews rose too. Contemporaneous works describe Shimon as a martyr and a new saint, though he had never offi cially converted to Christianity. The case was widely recorded, including in three documents that represent special types of hagiographic literature. The fi rst is the anonymous Czech treatise Inqvisitorní Process (Inquisitorial Proceedings, 1696), a collection of legal, government, and Church records of the Roman Catholic Inquisition. The second is a Latin account by the Jesuit Johannes Eder, Virilis Constantia (Manly Constancy, 1696), a classic hagiographic text. The last is Agnus inter Haedos (A Lamb among the Goats, 1738), a Latin -Czech school play, which was put on at the Jesuit seminary in the New Town, Prague, by grammar -school pupils. In these texts the narrative of Shimon Abeles is adapted to the image of a new martyr by repeated formulas, fi gures of speech, tropes, and topoi. These literary elements were common both to medieval literature and to early modern writing. Analysis of hagiographic commonplaces may show us how the Baroque legend came into being and was then transformed in hagiographic literature because of religious interests. They also reveal stereotypes of Jews, the roots of modern antisemitism.