"This theory obliges us to believe that a significant fraction of the rioters were students of Latin. " – or that their priests were students of Latin. Church and state often colluded to foment pogroms.
[ol]
[li]Was “hip hip hurrah” originally an anti-Semitic taunt?[/li][li]The riots crossed the main Catholic/Protestant lines in Germany, and eyewitnesses accused the Church of not doing enough to stop it, but not of instigating it.[/li][li]Knowledge of Latin was universal among the educated at the time. If you wanted to go to University, you needed Latin to get in. I myself attended a six-year school founded at about that same time for the specific purpose of providing a stream of Latin-speaking boys for the local college.[/li][/ol]On the other hand, all explanations involving acronyms before WWII (except in Hebrew) are extremely suspect. Furthermore, the notion that “HEP” signifies, “Hierosolyma est perdita,” and was a Crusader taunt (and there is no evidence that it ever was) is also pretty much unbelievable, because, although the Crusaders were certainly guilty of gross anti-Semitic acts from time to time, the whole point of the Crusades was that the Holy Land had been lost by the Christians. From the viewpoint of the Crusaders, shouting “Hierosolyma est perdita” at Jews is the wrong insult for the wrong enemy.