Trudy Gold
The Church Triumphant and Exit the Jews

Trudy Gold - The Church Triumphant and Exit the Jews

- Well, good evening everyone, and this comes to the conclusion of the first settlement of the Jews of England, and I think it’s very important to look at this kind of inside out history because one of the great questions when you are dealing with anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism today is, why is it so pernicious? My view is that it’s because anti-Judaism becomes so deeply embedded, tragically in Christian culture that it’s going to lead eventually to the expulsion of the Jews, and of course later on, despite the Enlightenment, I think the negative image of the Jew, which we still feel to this day, and the counter-argument to that, of course, in civilizations that don’t have this kind of negative image of the Jew, like Chinese civilization, Hindu civilization, and Jews, of course, were present in both, you don’t have, ironically, the Jews as particularly in China, they all assimilated. So we are left with that extraordinary notion that perhaps, look, think about it, the Jews are the only people who have survived for 2,000 years without a country of their own, and perhaps it is this negative stereotype, anti-Judaism itself that in the end did lead to the continuation of the Jews. It’s a very strange way of looking at it, but I often ponder this. Anyway, let’s get on with the first slide, if you don’t mind, Judy.

Do you remember last week, I gave you the list of the kings of England, and of course William has already lectured to you on Magna Carta. John, the youngest of the children of Henry II, and if you recall, it was in, under Henry II’s reign, Henry II, the strong plant as a king married to the greatest heiress in France. He was very much a strong secular ruler, and it was he who actually put his friend into the position of Archbishop of Canterbury because he wanted to be the only real power in the land, and of course, his friend Thomas a Becket turned against him, and that is one of the great stories of English history. He was an interesting man, Henry, and I would call him a great king, but one of his problems was, as I’ve already mentioned to you, he couldn’t control his children. So this great king who was a warrior, an intellectual, he was not a particularly religious man within the contexts of his time. He was so angry with the papacy that at one stage he actually threatened to become a Muslim. I mean, nobody took it seriously, but what he wanted above all else was the secular power of the English crown, but because he had these incredibly troublesome children, under his children, there was going to be continuous problems, and not only that, Richard who takes the throne, we’ve already looked at what happened to the Jews of England at the time of the coronation, and of course you have that terrible situation, that terrible massacre of the Jews. Isn’t it interesting, Richard I has such a wonderful, wonderful notion in British history.

He’s the great crusader king. He is the courtly knight. In fact, he was probably one of the worst kings England ever had if you’re talking in terms of how a king should rule. He left his country in virtual agony and anarchy in order to go off to the crusades to make a name for himself, the warrior knight. He was particularly cruel in his massacre of Muslim hostages, and there’s an interesting story. Here’s the stuff of legends. What is true and what is a legend? He had completely offended one of his German allies on the crusade and on his return to England, he is captured and held up in the castle of Durnstein and a ransom is demanded for his rescue. There are all sorts of legends of how he was discovered by the minstrel Blondel and how Robin Hood tried to help with the raising of the ransom, and there is also a story that in fact, in the end it was the Jews who had to deal with the money. What happened was, how was money transported in those days? Well, you remember what happened to Henry II when he confiscated the treasure of our Aaron of Lincoln. 85,000 pounds worth of treasure was lost in the English Channel. The story is that the Jews issued a promissory note. Having collected the ransom, they issued the first promissory note in history on Jews in the German lands who paid the ransom. It’s a very interesting story. I’m not sure how true it is, but this is the problem with mediaeval history, but Richard, who has his statue in Parliament Square, seen as one of the greatest kings, and if I wanted to be mischievous, I would say his statue in Parliament, although he didn’t sanction the pogrom, the worst pogrom in English history actually happened in his reign, and he is of course succeeded by the youngest of Henry VII’s brood John Lackland.

Why, because it’s the youngest son, he didn’t expect to rule. He finally becomes king of England, having fought his brother, having tried to take power, he’s now King of England and William, and of course William brilliantly talked to you about Magna Carta. Now, what I’m going to do is actually read clauses from Magna Carta, which tell you about the centrality of the Jews in Britain at the time. So there are two clauses. “If anyone who has borrowed from the Jews any amount, "large or small, dies before the debt is paid, "it shall not carry interest as long "as the heir is underage, and if the debt falls "into our hands, if the Jew dies and the king cedes "his bond, we will take nothing except the principle sum "specified in the bond.” Remember, this is to take away the power of the king, “and if the man dies owing a debt to the Jews, "his wife may have her dow and pay nothing of that debt, "and if he leaves children underage, "their needs should be met in a manner "in keeping with the holding of the deceased, "and the debt should be paid out of the residue, "saving the service due to the laws.” So basically it is not to protect the Jews at all. This is to protect English people who are in debt to the Jews, but it’s important to realise just how serious the Jews were to the economy of England. They had their heyday though in the reign of Henry II, and if you recall the sweep of history for the first three Norman Kings, William I, William II, and Henry I, when the crown was secure, all debts owing to the Jews, a percentage went to the king, and that is when they were safe. It was in the civil War that everything went wrong. Again under Henry II, the strong king, he protects them.

He actually finds them incredibly useful, and the richest man in England, of course, was Aaron of Lincoln, and now we have the incredibly weak John. Now King John, when he dies, his throne passes to his son Henry III. Henry III is nine years old and we’re going to see a regency. Henry III is a fascinating king because on one level, he never really, well, he didn’t fulfil the notion of kingship as far as the English were concerned. Now, if you think of the stereotype of the Jew at this period, who is the hero of the Jew? It’s the scholar, it’s the intellectual. Henry was a very indecisive character. When he finally takes the throne, he’s totally indecisive. He is weak, he is not strong in battle, but what he is is a builder. He is responsible for the beautiful Westminster Abbey, the furnishing of Windsor Castle, many abbeys, and not only that, for Oxford. In his reign, Oxford develops as a great centre. So he loved architecture, he loved the arts, but that’s not what qualifies you to be a king of England, and the most powerful presence in Europe at the period was a pope and that pope was Innocent III. Can we please see his picture, if you don’t mind, Judy? That’s John, I’ll come back to him in a minute, but that’s, or that’s Henry III, but can we move on to Innocent please? Innocent III, yes, Pope Innocent III.

He’s actually the most powerful of all the mediaeval popes. He had a long reign. He came to the reign to, he came into power in 1198 and he’s going to rule until 1216. He became Pope at a young age. He was only 37 years old. He is the one who is going to claim supremacy over all the kings and princes. He came from a very noble Italian family. His family gave nine popes to Italy and he, it really symbolises the height of papal power. Now, it’s fascinating because on one level, as far, it’s, this is really inside out history because here’s a pope who is seen as a great figure of the church. He was totally against the corruption of the church. He wanted to clean up the church. He wanted to make the monks, the priests far more acceptable to the people. He wanted them to live chaste lives, and it is he who convened the famous Fourth Lateran Council. Now, what irked him was the Muslim recapture of Jerusalem. He said, it is a divine judgement on Christendom because we have lapsed, we have gone into bad ways. Therefore divine judgement , the centre of our religious belief, Jerusalem, has been taken from us by the Muslims, of course Saladin, and he wanted to stop any inroads into heresy. He was the man who mounted the crusade against the Albigensians, the Cathars. In the southwest of France, I’m sure many of you have visited that area.

It’s an extraordinary, I know a lot of you go to south, go to Cannes, et cetera, but it’s worth a trip to southwest France, to Albi, to Carcassonne, that whole region, the borderlands as it were between France and Spain, very much away from the central power of the French, bordering on the Muslim lands. It was a very interesting centre of freedom of thought, and the great heresy, Catharism or Albigensianism arose, and these were people who believed that the papacy was totally corrupt, that Christianity was corrupt, that the God of this world was an evil God, that they worshipped a god beyond this world who was a god of light. It was more, far more Manicheism, the forces of light versus the thought forces of darkness, and they didn’t believe in the sort of panopleic, the papacy. They didn’t believe in the gold, and all the, look at the way the man’s dressed. They didn’t want to see the beauty of Rome. What they wanted was people to live chaste lives, service the poor, to live the life that Jesus of Nazareth actually preached. So, but this is a threat to the Catholic church because they don’t believe in priesthood. They don’t believe that there should be intermediaries between the man, between God and them, and consequently it was Innocent who leads a campaign against, he leads a crusade against the Albigensians, and it was terribly, terribly wicked in many ways because over 20,000 people were mowed down. It was an Englishman, Simon de Montfort, who leads the Albigensian crusade, and there is a terrible story where they enter this town and one of the knights said, how do we know who is a Cathar and who is a believer?

And the bishop said, kill them all. God will know his own, and important to remember this is a very brutal time in the need for, I suppose on one level they’re looking for religiosity, but there is no notion of the freedom of the individual. There can be no heresy in the Catholic church. It has to be wiped out, and you can make the case that the Catholic church is one of the most successful institutions the world has ever known. It withstood, it really withstood all the pressures right up until the Protestant Reformation, and one of the problems, so this is a Pope. Not only is he very much admired, but in fact he is, he’s honoured, on the doors of the House of Representatives, there are two popes who are seen as great law givers. So in America, in the House of Representatives, he is honoured as a great law-giving pope, and certainly he cleaned up the papacy, he wiped out heresy, but now we come to inside out history because what on earth was it like for the Jews? How on Earth can you cope with heresy when you have the arch heretics in the midst? The Jews are a problem for Christianity because if Jesus is the divine Messiah, then why on earth haven’t the people from Him, whom He sprung, why haven’t they converted?

And this becomes an absolute sore in Christianity, and here you see the church triumphant, it’s under Innocent that some of the monastic orders are founded like St. Francis of Assisi with the Franciscans, the Dominicans, which I’ve already mentioned to you before because these of course, when we were looking at Spain, these are the characters who of course were responsive. They were the major Inquisitors. So it’s the Franciscans, it’s the Carmelites, it’s the Dominicans, all these purist orders are founded under the reign of Innocent III. So on one level, he is a great man. He wants to launch another crusade to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims, who of course are completely heretical, and I’ve already mentioned to you, and please bear this in mind ‘cause it’s terribly important to understand in European history, this clash between Islam and Christianity is not really going to be solved until the last great Muslim empire, the Turkish empire, the Ottoman Empire, beg you pardon, the Ottoman Empire, is defeated at the gates of Vienna, and if you want another irony of history that William and I will be looking at quite soon, one of the great art ironies of history, the armies of Christendom were in fact financed by an extraordinary Jew called Samuel Oppenheimer, who was a court Jew to the Hapsburg Emperor, and not only that, he himself lifted the siege of Budapest. If you think about Europe, and remember Wendy and I have just been to a conference of successor states of the Russian Empire and of the Hapsburg Empire, what is fascinating is that Hungary becomes part of the Muslim empire and it’s not freed until 1683.

So important to remember, and one can state also, it’s an issue that I don’t really believe has been completely solved, because when you see the upswing in extremist Islam, extremist Christianity, extremist Judaism, where does the line draw? So this is a man, as I said before, he has a double reputation. On one level, he is incredibly respected by the Christian Church. On the other level, he is very, very problematic. Now, I’m going to give you some of his statements. “The Jew who denies the Messiah has nothing but lies. "Herod is the devil. "The Jews are demons. "That one is king of the Jews, "this one the king of the demons.” He once said though, at a council, “do not wipe out the Jews completely, "less perhaps Christians might be able to forget by law, "which the former, although not understanding it, "present it in their books to those "who do not understand it.” Now, this is fascinating. He’s never saying murder the Jews. On the contrary, they should live degraded lives as witness to the true faith of Christianity. So he convenes the Fourth Lateran Council.

There are over 1,000 delegates in the official liturgy of the church, and this is put in place at the Fourth Latteran Council. The faithful were exhorted right up until 1948 to pray on Good Friday for the perfidious Jews. Peter the Venerable, a great Christian commentator of the time, he said, it is our duty to hate the Jews, but is not our duty to murder them. Now I’m going to read you a few of the clauses of the Fourth Lateran Council because it’s in the Third Lateran Council. I think it is very important. So the Third Lateran Council, I should, I’m going to just read something before. That was in 1179. This was his first council. “Although in many ways the disbelief of the Jews "must be reproved since, nevertheless, through them, "our own faith is truly proved, they must not be oppressed "previously by the faithful. "As the prophet says, do not slay them "unless they be forgetful of by law.” This is Psalm 58:12, as if he was saying more openly, do not wipe out the Jews completely. Therefore, he then tightens up at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and it’s here that is laid down the measures against heretics. “Jews must wear a special dress.” This is really the beginning of the Jew badge, and it is decided that Jews must be marked out from the rest of the population so that Christians will have no excuse but to notice who is a Jew. “Christian women can no longer be "wet nurses to Jewish children. "There can be no Jewish, no Jewish household "can employ Christian servants who sleep over.”

It’s the notion of separating the Jew from the Christian, and it’s fascinating because that tells us that there must have been a certain amount of intercourse between Jew and Christian. They traded together. Don’t forget the Jews are the money lenders of Europe. It’s a negative stereotype, but people would go to them to pawn their possessions. There is a certain amount of dialogue between Jews and Christian and the fact they’re actually go, they’re saying you cannot dine in a Jew’s house. You cannot, and of course it goes further and says there can be no sexual intercourse between Jew and, a Jewish woman and a Christian man or a Christian man and a Jewish woman, and this is all laid down in the Fourth Lateran Council, clauses after clause after clause. A man called Robert of Redding, a Christian cleric in England who took a Jewish wife, he was actually burnt to death. So this Fourth Lateran Council is very, very potent, and what is important about it is it, the first reign it’s going to be implemented on is in England in the reign of Henry II. So before I do that though, I’ve given you an awful lot of negative stereotypes about the Jews, but there was one man, Peter Abelard, you may have heard of him, the great story of Heloise and Abelard who he had already very much fought. His dates are earlier, his dates are 1079 to 1142. What is interesting about him, if he’d lived in the Renaissance, we would’ve said he was a Renaissance scholar. Of course he was a monk and he was brutally castrated because of his affair with Heloise, but nevertheless, he was a great humanist, I should say more of a humanist than a Renaissance man, and this is what he writes from his great work, “The Divine Tragedy,” in which Abelard has a Jewish figure actually challenge Christian society. “No people is known ever to have suffered so much for God "as we have suffered unremittingly.”

So this is the Jew speaking, “and there could be no sin so firmly established as not to "have been consumed by the fire of our afflictions, "as everyone must concede. "Are we not amongst all the scattered nations alone, "without kings or princes, harassed by such "distressing expulsions that we pay almost every single day "an intolerable ransom for our miserable lives? "Is not the contempt and hatred of so deep that any wrong "done to us is accounted as a just retribution "and an offering most acceptable to God? "Even the princes who rule over us and whose shelter "we purchase at so heavy a price, desire our death "in order to seize our belongings. "We are denied the possessions of the soil, of vineyards, "of land and property, and there is none to shield us "against open or concealed malevolence. "How then can we earn enough to sustain this miserable life "but through the lending of money on interest to strangers, "a circumstance which naturally makes us reprehensible "to those who most feel themselves oppressed. "Our situation expresses far more clearly the language, "the horrible wretchedness of our existence and the danger "in which we constantly are confronted.” Now this is fascinating because this is of course a Christian cleric, albeit a very free thinking Christian cleric, a man whose written word is so very beautiful, actually taking the Jewish point of view and saying, can you imagine? He’s actually got the imagination to say, can you imagine what it must be like to be a Jew, pitious for our sufferings? And you know, at the, there were one or two princes, particularly in Spain at the time, as Christianity begins its reconquest from the Muslims. There was King James of Aragon who allowed disputation, and in a very famous disputation, Nachmanides wins against the Christian clerics on his intellectual argument where he basically says, how can the Messiah have come when the world is such an unjust place?

So, but basically you find very few people who are prepared to step outside the realm, and of course it’s Innocent who launches the Fourth Crusade, who cleans up heresy. He also begins a crusade in Spain against Islam. This is also how the church took power from the princes because any prince or king who went on crusade was assured his place outside purgatory. It was the quickest way to ascend to heaven. So let’s take this back to England now, in the regency of Stephen Langton, the brilliant chancellor who is ruling for the infant Henry III. We have the Council of Oxford, and it’s very much based on the Fourth Lateran Council. This is very much again, another first for England. Just as England had had the first blood libel, England was the first country to begin the wearing of the Jew badge. Now the other point about Henry III, I also said that he really began the establishment of colleges at Oxford. Who do you think came to Oxford? The Dominicans were established in 1216. They came to Oxford because the people who scholared at, who studied at the university at this period were of course theologians, and don’t forget also the books, the Incunable. Cambridge, by the way, was founded because a few of the Doms, they didn’t, there was a skirmish in the town and they ran away to Cambridge. They felt it was much more, it was a safer place for them. So it’s ironic, you have King Henry III who has a very bad reputation. He’s a weak king.

There’s going to be a lot of unrest in his period of office. There’s going to be, the barons are going to revolt against him. He can’t, of course, can you imagine the amount of debt he incurs, the building of all these amazing build, the building of the churches? He adored architecture, he adored learning, but he’s not the prince that the barons want. They want the strong ruler and there’s many, many revolts in his reign. So Oxford University though does receive its charter in 1248, in his reign. So let’s have a look at Stephen Langton. He is of course another hero of English history and you’ll see that William of course talked about him so strongly and fondly. Now again, it’s inside our history. Yes, he was a very strong man and he did keep the country relatively safe, but from a Jewish point of view, he was a nightmare because the Council of Oxford, which is really regarded as the Magna Carta of canon law, the 800th anniversary is actually next year, and the church actually plans to offer repentance over the anti-Jewish laws, which included making the wearing of the Jew badge compulsory, and this is, and by the way, the Council of Oxford also made St. George’s Day a holiday. Now, this is a letter that the, that was written for the church to consider by one of the clerics. This is, next year is the 800th anniversary of the 1222 Council of Oxford, which implemented some of the most egregious anti-Semitic decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, such as the law that the Jews wear a badge of shame to isolate them from the Christian public around them. These laws heightened anti-Semitic feeling and led to the first nationwide expulsion.

Now it’s interesting because it would appear that the church is going to have some sort of ceremony of reconciliation. Now, what were the laws that were imposed? The wearing of the Jew badge, all those laws separating Jews from Christians Further, and not only that, it was laid down the size of the Jew badge. It should be a hand this way, two fingers that way, a hand that way, so it was quite big, and it begins a terrible story where gradually as the church becomes more and more triumphant through Europe, the Jew badge is going to be introduced more and more. Important to remember that the Nazis did not invent the wearing of the yellow star, and this is one of the problems that we have to deal with, and I was discussing this with Wendy yesterday. We got to be careful because Christianity is a religion of love, and it is a religion that has given many, many extraordinary things to the world, but from a Jewish point of view, look, every kind of prejudice has its base, and I still firmly believe that the real basis, the original basis, is the anti-Judaism, which pushed the Jews into certain economic patterns, which of course led to hostility. Nobody likes the people who they borrow money from. They don’t sit down and reason it out and say, well, the Jews aren’t allowed to own land. They don’t think, well, what else can they do? And every Easter, particularly to an illiterate population, the story is regurgitated the, where the evil Jews who murdered gentle Jesus, Jesus is de-Judahized, his mother Mary is completely de-Judahized. It’s only even the Father, Joseph, who has the Jewish name. So in every way you see this issue of the Jew as the outsider, and that’s why I think that what I read you, that extract from Abelard is so extraordinary, but please don’t forget, there must have been a certain amount of inter-marriage. There must have been a certain amount of socialisation or the Council of Oxford would not have had to say, we don’t want it anymore. So it’s on a human level. People are people. So can we go onto the next slide please, Judy?

And that no, I’m sorry, we got to go back. I want the domus conversorum, please. Thank you, yeah. Now this is something else that was established in the reign of Henry III. He established, he’s a pious king, he’s a weak king. He’s a lover of art and architecture. He’s having terrible problems with the barons, but he is a very pious king. He’s under the thumb of the religious, and he sets up something called the domus conversorum. He takes over the house of a Jew in Oxford, and there is one in London. The one in London was on the site of the old public records office on Chancery Lane. Any Jew who converted to Christianity, because any Jew who converts, their soul is saved, and any Jew who converted to Christianity, their property was confiscated by the crown, but they could live in the domus conversorum. Men were given, I think it was one and a half pennies a day, a week, one and a half pennies a day. Women 8 pennies a week. So, and we know that in Elizabethan times there were a few Jews living in the domus conversorum, mainly Portuguese conversos, but it does go on for quite a long, it goes on that the domus conversorum exists until it’s demolished in 1750. So again, it illustrates the impetus of the church to, as it were, try to convert the Jews. Now Henry does more and more to cut back Jewish life. You’ve got to remember, the Jews are being seriously taxed. He has a problem because debts going to Jews in the main go back to the crown. Henry III had a very powerful brother, the famous Duke of Cornwall. Now this particular Duke had lands all over Europe. He was for at one time put forward to be one of the major kings of a prince, one of the major kings in an important state within the German confederation. He had taken on, his lands were in Cornwall, and he had taken on the debts of the Jews in return for giving money. The debts are now owed to him, and it’s important to remember that. Now, so what happens is this. In, no, before, sorry, I was going to talk about Hugh of Lincoln, but before I need to get, go onto, like I need to talk about other things. He’s so impoverishing the Jews that they are running out of money so much so that they actually come to him to beg him, to alleviate their loan. So, and also the community has gone down in number. I checked out the figures for the expulsion and we’re probably talking about 3,000 souls.

Now, this is in 1253. There are new restrictions on the Jews. No Jew is to remain in England unless you do the king’s service, and from that, the hour of birth, every Jew, whether male or female, serviced in some way, and that there’d be no synagogues of the Jews in England saving those places that we had in the time of our father, King John, no new synagogues, and in their synagogues, the Jews, one and all, subdue their voices in performing their ritual offices that Christians may not hear them. So you can’t pray loudly. You might upset Christianity, and that all Jews answer to the rector of the church of the parish in which they dwell touching all Jews parochial, relating to their houses, and no Christian nurse in future suckle or nourish the male child of any Jew. So despite the Council of Oxford, it’s still going on. So if he’s putting it into another statute, nor any Christian man or woman serve any Jew or Jewess or eat with them or tarry in their houses, having to say that again. No Jew disparaged the Christian faith or publicly dispute concerning the same. I don’t want any more disputations. The same sort of thing is happening in France. It’s happening in the German lands. In France at this period, the Talmud is being burnt, and that no Jew or Jewess eat or buy meat in Lent. We can’t, so you can’t, and that no Jew disparaged the Christian faith or publicly dispute concerning the same, and that no Jew have secret familiar intercourse with any Christian woman and no Christian man with a Jewess, and that every Jew wear his badge conspicuously on his breast and that no Jew enter any church or chapel for the purpose of transit or linger in them to dishonour Christ, and that no Jew place any hindrance in the way of another Jew of desires of turning to the Christian faith and that no Jew be received in any town, but by special licence of the king, save only amongst those towns in which they have been want to dwell.

That is in 1253. So things are becoming more and more difficult, and then in 1255 you have the most famous blood libel in English history, that of Hugh of Lincoln, which I believe Professor Pima talked about when he talked to you about Chaucer. Now I think this is important, but even before Hugh of Lincoln, there was a Jewish parliament and Jews had to attend in Worcester and they were fined 20,000 marks. So the money is being taken away from them, and then of course you have this petition to the king, which I’m going to read you. “We entreat the king for God’s sake licence and safe conduct "from his kingdom that we may seek some other place "under some other princes who bears some bowels of mercy. "The king extracts from us those things we cannot give him, "although he would pull out our eyes and cut our throat "where he has first pulled off our skin.” So basically the situation is absolutely dire. He’s fined them another 20,000 marks. There aren’t that many of them. They are getting poorer and poorer and Christianity is becoming totally triumphant, and then you come to the terrible case of Hugh of Lincoln. Now, because many of you will know this story very well, what I’m just going to refer to it very briefly, and it is one of the, remember the first blood libel in, against the Jews was in Norwich, followed by Thomas of Monmouth, followed by Harold Gloucester and Robert of Berry. One of the things you’ve got to know about this, it’s also about money. If you have a saint in your cathedral, or in your church, buried in your church, that means it’s going to become a place of pilgrimage, and that means also you will take more revenue, and William talked about this, modern scholarship says that many of these terrible tales were in fact encouraged by officials hoping to set up local cults. You know, the cult of William of Knowledge, the cult of Hugh of Lincoln.

It attracts pilgrims donations money, and it’s a terrible time because think about it. I’ve already said that Henry III was a weak king. The barons are rising up against him, which means they are in debt to the Jews, and also remember at the time of Hugh of Lincoln, Henry had sold his rights to the tax, to tax the Jews to his brother Richard of Cornwall. So he’s lost, Henry lost the income unless a Jew is convicted of a crime, then all money belongs to the king. So, and we also know that in 1255 there was a number of wealthy Jews in Lincoln because there was going to be a wedding. Now the story goes that a young boy disappeared on the 31st of July and his body was found in a well on the 29th of August, and the Jews were accused of imprisoning him and torturing him, and this again is another church chronicler, Matthew Paris. The Jews of Lincoln stole a boy called Hugh, who was about eight years old. After shutting him up in a secret chamber, they fed him on milk and other childish food. They sent to almost all the cities of England in which there were Jews and summoned some of them from each city to be present at a sacrifice to take place in Lincoln in insult to Jesus Christ. This is again the whole notion of the Jews conspiring, for they had a boy concealed for the purpose of sacrifice, of being crucified. They subjected the boy to various tortures. They scourged him 'til the blood flowed. They crowned him with thorns and spat upon him. Each of them then pierced him with a knife and scotched at him with blasphemous insults, gnashing their teeth, calling him Jesus, the false prophet. In diverse ways, they taunted him and pierced him to the heart with a spear.

When the boy was dead, they took the body down from the cross and disembodied it, it is said for the purpose of their magic rituals. Now this is a church chronicler telling the story of Hugh of Lincoln. There’s a terrible furore in the city. A Jew called Coppin, under torture, report, reputedly confessed, and he was offered immunity. He had been tortured by a man called John of Lexington, who was actually the brother of the bishop of Lincoln, and this is where you have the collusion with the, you know, with really the church wanting to get money this way. Henry himself arrives in Lincoln and ordered Coppin to be executed. He ordered 90 Jews to be arrested and charged with ritual murder. You see, if they’re charged with ritual murder, his brother can’t get the debts. He has because they’re guilty. 18 of them were hanged for refusing to partake in this show trial. In fact, what then happens is Richard of Cornwall, who was a very strong individual. You should read a book on him. He’s a great story. His is a great story. He had the 71 of the remaining prison released and the, but the point was they were released, they were found not guilty, but the miracle of Hugh goes on, and this is the bishop of Lincoln himself. This is Bishop Grosseteste whose brother was in charge of the whole trumped up affair. “As murderers of the Lord, as blaspheming Christ "and mocking his passion, they were to be held in captivity "to the princes and the earth. "As they have the brand of Cain and are condemned "to wander over the fate of force, the face of the earth. "So they will have the privilege of Cain "and no one is to kill them.” Now of course, it enters into history through the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, so the image of the blood libel. By this time, the Jews are so impoverished that we come to the reign of Edward III. Can we see his picture, Judy? Sorry for driving you mad. I didn’t have the pictures in the right order, did I?

• [Judy] No, sorry, who did you ask for?

• I want Edward I now, his picture. Yeah, it’s my fault as ever. There you have it. Now I’m sure many of you will have heard of Edward I. Those of you who love the movies, he is the evil king in “Braveheart.” Edward I was a much stronger character than his brother. He was the man who subdued the Welsh and his son Edward II, became the first prince of Wales. His main battles were with the Scots. He, or his father had lost, his grandfather had lost land in France. Henry III was not really up to campaigning, but his son, Edward I was, he was very much the warrior king. He, as I said, he was loathed by the Scots. He managed to pacify the Welsh, and that is why of course the present heir to the throne, Prince Charles is of course the Prince of Wales because, and it goes back to Edward I, his son Edward II, one of, again, one of the weakest kings in English history, but Edward I, who gets very good press in England, the strong warrior king, what’s he going to do about the Jews? Well, basically he’s inherited a completely impoverished Jewry. There’s no money left. He wants to curry favour with the church. The church is demanding an end to usury. So he comes up with the radical solution. He forbids them from lending money. What he says is they have now got to become farmers. They now have to go into some sort of work. So, and they are not allowed, and they are definitely not allowed to end money, and that from the age of seven, every Jew must wear a badge on his outer garment, and it’s to be two tablets joined of yellow felt six inches and the breadth of three inches. He’s laying it down quite firmly, the length, and it’s very big, and that after every boy is 12 years old, they pay three pence yearly at Easter to the king whose bounty is.

So the Jews are controlled by the king. They can’t lend money anymore, and they basically, he’s taking away all their rights and he’s going further and he’s going, he’s actually going further than his father, but the statutes of the Jews failed to improve the position of the Jews, either economically and/or socially. So let me curry favour with the church, why not expel them? So what he does is the actual edict of expulsion has been lost, but we, what we do have is letters simultaneously issued to the various sheriffs saying that you’ve got to get rid of the Jews and the, of course, how often does this happen? The edict is given on Tisha B'Av, and as I mentioned to you last week, because it was that time of the year, Jews had to be out of England on the 31st of October, which of course is Walpurgis Night, the night of the witches, because we want no Jews in England on All Saints Day, and isn’t that interesting? It also gives you a notion of the paganism within Christianity. So this is the actual edict of expulsion, as I said, the, beg your pardon, the edict to the sheriffs, and this is the particular one to the sheriff of Gloucester. “Whereas the king has prefixed to the Jews of his realm "a certain time to pass out of his realm, and he will, "they should not be treated by his ministers or otherwise "than it has been customary, he orders the sheriff "to cause proclamation to be made throughout his bailiwick, "prohibiting anyone from injuring or wronging the Jews. "He is ordered to cause the Jews to have safe conduct "at their cost.” They’ve got to pay for it when they, with their chattels, which the Jews have granted, which the king has granted to them.

He lets them leave with a certain amount of possessions, direct them towards London to cross the sea, provided if before they leave, they restore the pledges of Christians in their possession to who those things belong. The likes to the sheriffs of Essex, Norton, York, Northampton, et cetera, et cetera, and also safe conduct, and he sends letters to his wardens, officers, and the sailors in the saint ports. “To each and every Jew of our kingdom, "we have fixed a definite time limit for their departure. "We do not wish them harmed whether in person "or in possession. "We place the Jews in your care when they come to "the above mentioned ports with their wives, childrens, "and belongings to cross the sea before "the aforementioned limit by the 31st of October. "You should ensure their passage be safe and speedy "and that their journey for which they should pay "is free from danger. "In the same way the poor amongst the Jews should be treated "sparingly when they come to cross the sea, "and for others, according to their ability, "shall the charge be made in a restrained fashion "according to the type of passage. "None of them shall be prevented from having passage "by excessive or improper demands. "We strongly lay upon you this grave responsibility "that no one shall set upon the aforesaid Jews, "whether against this person or their possession in any way, "and you shall not permit any injury, molestation, "harm, or impediment at Westminster, 27th day of July.” Now, is this because he is a kind man? Not at all. He is a law giver and he does believe in the strength of the law, and anyone who causes anarchy or disquiet in his realm is guilty. So the Jews have to leave the country. He wants them to leave in an orderly way, and he doesn’t want them to be mistreated. So over the sea, of course, where are they going to go? They’re going to go to France and next week I’m going to look, I’m going to speculate on where they could have gone, and as I said to you, I’ve been checking all the sources. We think about 3,000 of them left at that time. We also think that it’s quite possible that some of them would’ve converted to stay in this country. We don’t have enough records, but basically this is the pattern of the Jews of England.

So the first settlement, going back to that speech of Max Nordau’s in 1897, remember it? “There is only one country in the world, England.” You can say that there’s a lot of firsts. I will repeat them. The first country to have a blood libel against the Jews, the first country to insist on the wearing of the Jew badge, and the first country to expel them, and of course they’re expelled. They’re going to go first to France, but I’ll talk about that next week as we meander through our extraordinary journey into Jewish history, but I thought this was quite important because anti-Semitism is becoming such an alarming force at the moment. I don’t want to overstate it, I don’t want to sort to get upset and worried because it’s not at the kind of level. Anyway, I don’t want to go in that argument. You’ll be very pleased to know that we will be having some very important guests coming in talking about this subject the first week in December through a Shine a Light programme, which the Kirsch Foundation are putting together, and it’s marvellous. So we will have more time to talk about it then, but I think in order to under, because lockdown has given us a lot of time to think, I think it’s quite important that we do get into our heads where the prejudice comes from and how can we deal with it today? How can we actually deal as Jews and Christians push on? And in fact, I’m very pleased that my colleague Helen Fry, who I know has, will be coming in to talk about other things, but she, her PhD was actually on Jewish-Christian relations and Wendy has persuaded her to give some lectures on that. So I think that’s going to be very, very interesting for you. So I think I should stop there, and let’s have a look at some questions, shall we?