John Tolan’s England’s Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century fills a valuable space in the history of how the Norman Jews fared in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries under the reigns of Henry III and Edward I. Henry’s long reign (1216-1272)—which began as a minority one when his father, John I, passed away in 1216—had many unfortunate aspects to it that hurt and disadvantaged Jews. Tolan’s England’s Jews details the seemingly unrelentless mistreatment that the medieval Jews suffered in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries during all of Henry III’s and continuing into the early years of Edward I’s reigns (r. 1272-1307). Among these anti-Jewish gestures were Henry III’s unfair tallages of the Jews that were meant to fuel Henry III’s many military campaigns and enable him to finance a Crusade.
As a way of situating us in England’s past, England’s Jews strategically opens (and closes) with mention of a contemporary event in England publicized in a 2004 episode of the BBC show History Cold Case. In discussing this episode of History Cold Case, Tolan means to illustrate the extent to which present English society continues to be haunted by its neglect of medieval English Jews. This 2004 episode of History Cold Case effectively reveals the discovery of “seventeen skeletons in a well shaft” in Norwich, England. “DNA sequencing” enables the research team to discover that “some elements in [the skeletons’] DNA were close to those of Ashkenazi Jews” (1). Even more troubling, these skeletons turn out to be “six adults and eleven children aged between two and fifteen, dated from the twelfth or thirteenth century. The adults had been thrown down headfirst, and the children after them” (1). Disturbing as this discovery of these seventeen skeletons was, perhaps even more troubling is learning that despite being “the site of a flourishing Jewish community,” as well as “a locus of anti-Jewish violence”—a subject that the Norwich resident Arnold Wesker’s 1994 play Blood Libel addresses—as late as 2008 “visitors to the local historical museum [would] not find a single mention of [the Jews’] presence” (1). [1] Tolan’s reference to the 2004 discovery of the seventeen skeletons and BBC’s show History Cold Case—in both his introduction and conclusion—serves as an important frame to his historical account and works to show to what extent the English “are blind to their own history” (1).
Medieval Oxford, another site that Tolan’s England’s Jews also brings us to consider, figures as a place where Tolan explores Christian-Jewish relationships. One of those moments of Christian-Jewish relationships, though, is a particularly troubling story. In both chapters 4 and 7, Tolan discusses the story of Deulecresse, a young man who may have mocked a Christian processional and then committed suicide. In chapter 4, England’s Jews first mentions the death of Deulecresse, a young Oxford Jew accused of toppling the cross. Soon after this accusation surfaces, Deulecresse allegedly commits suicide, and Tolan leaves us with the question, “Did [Deulecresse] fear the consequences of his mockery?” (92). In chapter 7, England’s Jews turns to the Book of the Chancellors and Proctors of the University of Oxford that “conserves a brief narration” of the “incident” that involved the story of the cross being toppled. Chapter 7 explains that this “incident” included a “solemn procession” through the Oxford Jewry to St. Frideswide’s Priory on Oxford’s Southeast corner (163-166). Tolan ends the discussion of this “incident” by more pointedly asking, “why would Jews rashly attack a cross carried in procession by Christians?” (166). As a medieval historian, Tolan knows that finding the answers to these questions about Deulecresse’s suicide and the reasoning behind the toppled cross are likely impossible, but perhaps Tolan’s queries signal a concern about the neglect of Deulecresse in English Jewish history. A second point that introduces a conversation about the (neglected) presence of Jews in English medieval history involves the creation of Merton College at the University of Oxford. [2] Tolan finds that the Oxford Jewish community of “the twelfth and thirteenth” centuries occupied “a key role as financiers and landlords to the emerging university” (90). While Tolan does not mention that in 1266-1267, Jacob ben Moses of Oxford and his wife Henna signed a deed that gives William de Merton the land that will enable Merton College to become a residential college (Record 188), Tolan does refer to Oxford’s previous neglect to have markers for such Jewish memorial sites as the Jewish cemetery that is now Oxford’s Botanical Gardens, and the site where Deacon Robert was put to death for converting to Judaism (190).
Despite mention of instances of terrible circumstances experienced by English Jews, Tolan does not want antisemitic abuse to be the only focus of England’s Jews. While not denying that “medieval England’s Jews” were certainly “victims of prejudice and violence,” however, Tolan does also aim to have his history pay homage to the medieval English Jews’ actions “as key actors in the construction of English society” (190). In fact, Tolan engages with a variety of reference material that brings him to reproduce an array of stories about the Norman English Jews that range from “helping finance Oxford colleges or monastic institutions” to “drinking beer with their Christian neighbors, and inviting them to [attend] their weddings” (190-191). To that end, Tolan has written a history whose seven chapters range from broadcasting the English bishops’ relentless attempts to limit contact between Jews and Christians (chapter 2); considering Henry III’s incitement for Jews to convert to Christianity (chapter 3); [3] historicizing the appearance of legends of Christian boy martyrs, allegedly slain by Jews (chapter 5); describing Issac of Norwich’s powerful financial business (chapter 1); contextualizing Meir of Norwich’s troubling piyyut, “Put a curse on my enemy” (chapter 7); and enlarging on Jacob of London’s information about medieval English Jewish dietary laws (chapter 7). Chapter 7 also details the positive interactions between Jews and Christians. In fact, Tolan features three stories to demonstrate that the common people’s sentiments likely differed from the monarch’s and the church’s. For instance, chapter 7 provides evidence of functional Jewish-Christian relationships, and by introducing these stories to his readers, Tolan—both directly and indirectly—brings us to rethink at least three medieval episodes in the complicated history of English-Jewish contact. In one of these stories, Richard de Swinfield, an English bishop, took a particular interest in a Jewish wedding in 1286 in Hereford. Swinfield “wrote a letter to the dean of Hereford Cathedral, instructing him strictly to forbid his parishioners from attending the wedding” (175). And yet, despite this injunction from the bishop, “Hereford’s Christians” still went to the Jewish wedding and found themselves “eating, drinking, and dancing” with the Jews (176). The interactions between medieval Christians and Jews were not only limited to this possibly posh Jewish wedding, though. Tolan turns directly to the passages in Jacob of London’s 1286 Etz Ḥayyim [Tree of Life] that refer to Jews’ being permitted to “buy pastries from Christian bakers and to share a beer with Christians in their homes” (176). A third reference in Chapter Seven to positive Christian-Jewish interactions points out that two Christian butchers—Roger de Lakenham and “‘John the pastry-maker’”—were “accused of selling Jewish meat or trepha” (178), the unkosher parts of the meat that religious law prohibits the Jews from eating. Roger’s and John’s handling of the trepha, Tolan believes, indicates a “common collaboration between Jewish and Christian butchers” (178). Notably, the Hereford wedding, Jacob of London’s words, and Roger’s and John’s “collaborations,” Tolan notes, all occur “only four years” before Edward I expels all of the Jews from England.
John Tolan’s England’s Jews turns out to become quite an emotional experience for Tolan, who almost grabs onto the three stories about positive Christian-Jewish interaction as a safety net of sorts. Nevertheless, in the conclusion Tolan laments, sometimes quite poetically, that “Anti-Semitism has been an all too frequent part of genteel English culture, and a handy explanation for what was wrong with the world...The history we forget or choose to ignore comes back to haunt us. Which is why it is important for me to show that English Jews, though few in number, were an integral part of English society in the thirteenth century” (189). Tolan wants his readers to know that “medieval England’s Jews should be remembered not only as victims of prejudice and violence, but as key actors in the construction of English society” (190). And to that end Tolan clearly wants his England’s Jews to contribute to the recent trend to make visible the medieval Jews’ influence to English culture. In a way through the research involved in making this book, Tolan has been virtually brought to inhabit medieval England and may even imagine himself as one of those people having a drink with an English Jew. As Tolan reveals, his project has been “all the more urgent to [him]” because he has found the book not only timely but also critically important “to recount the story told in these pages, so that the Jewish men and women who lived in medieval England can make their voices heard” (192). Tolan’s efforts have been achieved: England’s Jews begins the valuable journey toward being able to hear the “voices” of medieval England’s Jews as they cry out and try to become audible.
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Notes:
1. Arnold Wesker, Blood Libel, 1994. In Arnold Wesker’s Historical Plays (London: Oberon Books, 2012).
2. Merton College, Muniments Room, Oxford, Record 188.
3. Those Jews not relocated to the Domus Conversorum [House of the Converted] were sent to monasteries and convents throughout England.