William of Norwich and the Expulsion of the Jews

Topics, Notes and Comments

Bibliographic Data

ID8931301
AuthorsGillian Bennett (corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume116
Issue3
Pages311-314
Publication date2005-11-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFolklore (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-587X • E-ISSN: 1469-8315
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00155870500282768
OpenAlexW1765333236
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited5

In the last issue of Folklore I examined the legend of Saint William of Norwich and attempted to revaluate its place in the blood libel legend (Bennett 2005). In that paper I sought to tackle some of the more folkloric questions, such as, firstly, whether there is any essential difference between the primary source and the legend we now know and, if so, what its significance is, and secondly whether it is really the case that this was the first recognisable instance of the blood libel legend. In this follow-up note, I briefly consider the rather more historical question of whether this and similar accusations were responsible for the persecution of Jews in England and their expulsion from the country at the end of the thirteenth century? I am a folklorist, of course, and straying into the realms of historical analysis makes me nervous. I offer this note in the hope that it might be the first of several discussions of this folklorically important question. Although the case of El Santo Nino de la Guardia mentioned in the earlier article undoubtedly was the excuse for the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, [1] I have come to the personal conclusion that we are wrong to lay too much of the blame for the persecution of Jews in medieval England on these sorts of accusations. I think it is very probable that, in medieval England at least, accusations of Jewish child murder were part of anti-Jewish feeling rather than a primary cause of it. To be sure, prior to 1144 the Jewish community in Norwich had been the largest outside London, or the wealthiest, [2] but by the expulsion of 1290 there were perhaps only fifty or sixty Jewish people left in Norwich (Lipman 1967, 38). There is also evidence of continuing hostility between Jews and Christians in that city. This burst into flame in 1230 when Jews were accused of forcibly circumcising a Christian boy. [3] The case rumbled on over several years and led to a citizen's attack on Jews in 1235, involving beatings and arson (Lipman 1967, 59-64). There were further disturbances there in 1238 (possibly related to the circumcision case). It is true, too, that subsequent incidents in which Jews were accused of ill-treating children here and elsewhere must have been based on some prior rumour. It seems obvious that the most famous case of all, that of Hugh of Lincoln, owes a great deal to Thomas of Monmouth's Life of William of Norwich, and M. R. James has estimated that in three further English cases (those at Gloucester, Bury St Edmunds and Bristol) distinct links to Norwich can be established. At Blois in France, also, where there was an accusation in 1171, it seems there were Norwich connections, since Bishop Eborard died there and may have brought the legend of William with him (James 1896, lxxvi). The cases at Gloucester, and particularly that at Winchester in 1192 (see James 1896, lxxvi), seem also in some respects to be similar to Thomas's story. However, two other things were going on during this time that we tend to overlook and, for me at least, provide a more convincing backdrop to anti-Jewish feeling. These are crusader enthusiasm and changes in the monarch's attitude towards Jews and hence in their political situation--in brief, war, religion and money, the unholy trinity so often responsible for human suffering. I do not have the expertise to discuss these questions in any detail; all I want to do is to draw on the scholarship of others to indicate where the tensions lie, and hope that other contributors to this journal will be able to correct and refine my understandings. Let me begin with money. The crucial change seems to have been in the way successive English monarchs exploited Jewish wealth. Very much simplified, it seems that whereas the monarchs up to the reign of Stephen relied on Jewish capital to finance large projects, and therefore encouraged and supported them, from the reign of Richard I the Jews began to be seen (in Cecil Roth's phrase) as royal milch cows, an almost infinitely exploitable cash resource

Archaeology · Blame · Excuse · Folklore · Folkloristics · Judaism · Legend · Persecution · Politics · Theology · Thursday · Classics · History · Law · Medicine · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub