{"id":5230,"date":"2020-01-24T12:24:39","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T12:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=5230"},"modified":"2021-06-15T16:35:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T15:35:46","slug":"remembering-medieval-canterburys-relationship-with-its-jewish-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/remembering-medieval-canterburys-relationship-with-its-jewish-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering medieval Canterbury\u2019s relationship with its Jewish community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dean Irwin looks at the historical relationship between England, Canterbury and the Jewish Community. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The discovery of an execution\ncemetery on the outskirts of Andover, Hampshire, raised many questions, one of\nwhich was, apparently, \u2018could they be Jews\u2019? This question arose because, from\nshortly after the Norman Conquest (1066) until the general expulsion of the\nJews from England (1290), there was a Jewish presence in England, including, by\nthe mid-thirteenth century, at Andover. That community was expelled in 1275\nwhen Edward I\u2019s famously formidable mother, Eleanor of Provence, obtained\npermission from her son to have the Jews expelled from her dower towns. In\ndiscussing this question, wider questions about the Jews in Hampshire (notably\nat Winchester) and the execution of Jews during the thirteenth century were\nraised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last July I journeyed to Winchester\nto talk with Raksha Dave about the Jews of medieval England for the current Channel\n4 series, Bone\nDetectives: Britain\u2019s Buried Secrets<\/a><\/em>. Much of the conversation centred\nupon the so-called \u2018coin-clipping pogrom\u2019 which encompassed England in 1278-9.\nThis saw many Jews (most of them, falsely) accused of snipping the edges off\ncoins for the silver, which could be used to make other coins or objects. At\nLondon alone, the Pipe Roll for 1278-9 reveals that the 269 Jews were executed\non this charge, compared to 29 Christians. Such was the extent of the false\naccusations levelled against the Jewish community that by 1 May 1279 the Crown\nordered that any Jew who had not already been accused, would face a fine rather\nthan the gallows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To view relations between the town and Canterbury and the Jewish community through the lens of this one event, however, would be to give a grossly distorted version of the Jewish experience in medieval Canterbury. Indeed, relations between the two communities seem, generally, to have been positive. During the twelfth century, for example, Jewish community supported the Chapter of Christ Church against Archbishop Baldwin of Forde during the <\/strong>Hackington dispute<\/strong><\/a> (1187-8). <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The coin-clipping pogrom affected\nJewish communities across England, including at Canterbury. Two letters in Canterbury\nCathedral Archives demonstrate this. Issued by the Crown, directing the\nrecipients to excommunicate any individuals who sought to claim the goods of\nexecuted Jews. These were, presumably, issued, because, following their\nexecution, all property and goods should have been transferred to the Crown,\nwhich suggests that that process was not adhered to by the some in the local\ncommunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Equally, the witness lists of the\nAnglo-Jewish charters held in the Cathedral, as well as the Muniments of\nWestminster Abbey, hint at strong relations between the Jewish and civic\ncommunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is not to say that, there\nweren\u2019t tensions between the two communities, and these occasionally escalated\ninto violence. In April 1264, the forces of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of\nGloucester, swept through Canterbury to attack the Jewish community, though it\nis unclear whether the citizens of the town joined him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As has already been noted in the\ncase of the Hackington dispute, there is substantial evidence of the\ninteraction between the religious houses and Jewish community. For much of the\nthirteenth century, St. Augustine\u2019s abbey seems to have been perennially\nindebted to the Jews. Moreover, some of the best evidence that survives for the\nphysical location of individual Jews in medieval Canterbury comes from after\nthe Expulsion. At that point, all the Jewish properties in England defaulted to\nthe Crown and Christ Church received advice on how to get a royal licence to\ntake possession of those properties and a list of those houses which were\nobtained has survived, listing the extent of the property, the Jewish owner and\nthe new Christian owner, as well as their annual value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It lists that Elias of London, for\nexample had held a house, with a solar, worth twenty shillings which was taken\ninto the hands of the nunnery of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Canterbury).\nIt is particularly lovely that a roll produced fifteen years later, the houses\nwere still being identified with their former Jewish owners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These, and other documents, will\nbe displayed in the Canterbury Cathedral Archives as part of a series of events\nto commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January 2020. For more information\nvisit<\/em><\/strong> here<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dean Irwin is from the School\nof Humanities<\/a>. You can watch him speak about medieval Jews on the Channel 4\nseries the Bone Detectives on Saturday, 25 January 8pm. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image: Marginal Illustration from the Rochester Chronicle\n(British Library, Cotton Nero D. II.), folio 183v .<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dean Irwin looks at the historical relationship between England, Canterbury and the Jewish Community. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":5233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[838,2,3902],"tags":[3237,3245,3241,3234],"class_list":["post-5230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith-and-religion","category-history","category-research","tag-canterbury-cathedral","tag-holocaust-memorial-day","tag-jewish-community","tag-medieval-canterbury"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Jeanette Earl","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2020\/01\/Medieval-Jews.jpg","postExcerpt":"Dean Irwin looks at the historical relationship between England, Canterbury and the Jewish Community. ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5230"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7566,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230\/revisions\/7566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}