King Henry III seized and granted to Master Benedict a messuage (a dwelling with adjacent lands and buildings) that had belonged to Senioret.3 No records regarding the case survive from the period between 1231 and 1234. During these years, hearings likely were held in the archidiaconal and coroners’ courts as well as before the king’s itinerant justices.4
In 1234, Master Benedict, who was a Christian physician, came before the royal court at Norwich. So state the Curia Regis Rolls of King Henry III, which preserve a summary of legal proceedings pertaining to the case that unfolded in 1234 and 1235.5 Before the assembled justices, the prior of Norwich, Dominicans, Franciscans, and other clerics and laymen, Master Benedict accused a Jew named Jacob of having snatched and circumcised his son Edward four years earlier, when Edward was five. Jacob circumcised Edward, Master Benedict explained, because Jacob “wanted to make [Edward] a Jew.”6 Master Benedict implicated twelve additional Jews as accessories to this crime. At least five of these other Jews—Senioret ben Josce (who was outlawed in 1231, as noted above), Meir ben Senioret, Isaac ben Solomon, Diaia (Elazar) le Cat, and Mosse ben Abraham—were leading local moneylenders.7 The likeness of one of these moneylenders, Mosse ben Abraham—who was known also as Mosse Mokke and Mosse cum naso (“Moses with the nose”)—is sketched atop an Exchequer receipt roll from the year 1233, In an intricate and rather mysterious drawing that includes the earliest extant depictions of non-biblical, historical Jews (Figure 1).8
Figure 1. Exchequer receipt roll, Hilary and Easter terms, 1233. London, TNA, E401/1565 Ml.
Edward, now nine years old, also took the stand in 1234. He told the crowd of onlookers that, In Jacob’s home four years earlier, one Jew held him and covered his eyes, while another Jew “circumcised him with a small knife.” Edward added that, Immediately after circumcising him, the Jews gave him a new name. To choose this name, they placed “the bit that they cut off of his member,” that is, his foreskin, In a bowl of sand and took turns searching for it with small straws. The Jews renamed Edward “Jurnepin” after the Jew who uncovered his foreskin.9
Circumcision and the bestowal of a new name were both integral parts of the Jewish ritual sequence that brought boys and men into the Jewish fold. Additional testimonies given at Norwich in 1234, as well as before the itinerant justices at Catteshall, stated explicitly that Norwich Jews had sought to make Edward one of their own. A Christian woman named Matilda de Bernham, who allegedly rescued Edward after he “escaped from the hands of the Jews,” said that she found Edward “weeping and wailing and saying that he was a Jew.” The coroners of the city and county of Norwich and the former constable Richard of Fresingfeld testified that, after Matilda brought Edward to her home, Jews repeatedly tried to take Edward back “with great force,” declaring that “Jurnepin” was “their Jew.” The constable recounted how some Jews even lodged a formal complaint with him that “Christians wanted to take away their Jew.” In addition, according to the coroners and the constable, the Jews forbade Matilda “to give [the boy] swine’s flesh to eat because, they said, he was a Jew.”10
Following the 1234 hearings at Norwich and Catteshall, hearings were held at Westminster before King Henry III, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the majority of the bishops, earls, and barons of England. Meanwhile, other developments were under way. In 1235 and 1238, Christians in Norwich beat Jews and set fire to Jewish homes in outbursts of violence that the circumcision case undoubtedly contributed to fueling.11 In addition, Norwich Jews made several attempts to extricate themselves from their predicament. For instance, they gave the king one mark of gold (£6 13s. 4d.) to have Edward’s body reexamined to reevaluate whether or not Edward had been circumcised.12 This examination, whose intriguing outcome shall be analyzed in Chapter 5, did not, however, change the course of the proceedings. From the Tower of London, the Jews who had been accused of “circumcising a certain Christian boy” promised to pay the king one hundred marks to have respite of judgment.13 This, too, had no effect. Nor did the Jews’ promise the following year (1236–37) to pay two hundred pounds to have a trial “according to the Assize of the Jews of England”—that is, before a mixed jury of Christians and Jews—and fifty marks to be let out on bail.14 Nor did a payment in 1240 of twenty pounds again to be tried before a mixed jury of Christians and Jews.15 Ultimately, the case was turned over to ecclesiastical officials. According to the chronicler at St. Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire, Matthew Paris (1200–1259), this was done at the command of William of Raleigh, who became bishop of Norwich in 1239.16
As a result of this investigation, at least three Jews—three of the leading moneylenders whom Master Benedict accused in court, Isaac ben Solomon, “Theor” (probably Diaia le Cat), and Mosse ben Abraham—were hanged, and their property reverted to the Crown.17 At least ten Jews became fugitives, one of whom went to live in France.18 For his part, Master Benedict was granted more property. In addition to receiving the messuage of Senioret ben Josce in 1231, In 1240, he received the house of “Theor, Jew of Norwich, [who was] hanged for the circumcision of a certain Christian boy.”19
Beyond Calumny
In some regards, the Norwich circumcision case was not unusual. It was one of many instances in which thirteenth-century Christians imprisoned and executed Jews on charges of having harmed Christians. Starting in the twelfth century, amid social, political, religious, and economic changes, Christians increasingly marginalized and demonized the Jewish minority that lived in their midst. To be sure, Christians and Jews continued to interact in multiple registers; cooperation, collaboration, and friendship between individual Christians and Jews endured. Mistrust and hostility were on the rise, however, and Jews were increasingly vulnerable. The last decades of the thirteenth century witnessed the first expulsions of Jews from European polities. In 1290, the Jews were expelled from England.20
The Norwich circumcision case specifically exemplifies the thirteenth-century trend of prosecuting Jews on charges of having preyed on a Christian boy. During the 1230s and 1240s, two narratives developed about the Norwich circumcision case, both of which portrayed Norwich Jews as kidnapping and circumcising Edward. The first of these narratives, which is preserved in the summary of the legal proceedings mentioned above, characterized the Jews’ aim as converting Edward to Judaism. The second narrative, by contrast, transformed the case into an attempted ritual murder—that is, the torturing to death of a Christian (usually a young boy) out of spite for all things Christian. According to the chroniclers at the abbey of St. Albans, Norwich Jews circumcised Edward in anticipation of crucifying him.
In the nineteenth century, the historian and philosemitic Jewish convert to Christianity Moses Margoliouth declared that the Norwich circumcision case was “a venomous calumny invented by Christians in order to possess themselves of their Jewish neighbors’ wealth.”21 Most subsequent observers have shared this assessment.22 I concur that anti-Jewish sentiments shaped Master Benedict’s accusation as well as the Christian response. The fact that the legal proceedings targeted and despoiled leading Jewish moneylenders is one of several considerations that strongly suggest that the affair was a travesty of justice that smeared Jews as cruel and depraved while personally benefiting Master Benedict. This book probes the many ways in which the Norwich circumcision case participated in contemporary anti-Jewish discourse.
This book maintains also, however, that Master Benedict’s claim that Norwich Jews sought to turn his son into a Jew can teach us more. In medieval Europe, Christians forcibly converted Jews—including countless Jewish children—to Christianity, and not the other way around. Even the charge that Jews sought to convert a Christian child to Judaism was unprecedented. As such, this particular aspect of Master Benedict’s allegation invites scrutiny, both for what it might reveal about Christian constructions of Jews and also as a possible clue to actual Jewish practices.
Master Benedict’s accusation that Jews sought to convert his son to Judaism draws attention to three aspects of thirteenth-century Jewish-Christian