{"id":7762,"date":"2020-01-25T15:04:36","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T15:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/?p=7762"},"modified":"2020-01-26T14:33:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T14:33:00","slug":"jews-becket-henry-iii-and-canterbury-a-heady-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/jews-becket-henry-iii-and-canterbury-a-heady-mix\/","title":{"rendered":"Jews, Becket, Henry III and Canterbury – a heady mix!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is Graduation Day for the first cohort of taught MA MEMS and Modern History students next Friday, so in the blog next week I will be revealing the winner of the first Lawrence Lyle Memorial Prize with, I hope, a photograph. However, this week I\u2019ll bring you two brief reports on the Kent History Postgraduate meeting on Wednesday and Professor David Carpenter\u2019s joint Historical Association and Canterbury Cathedral Archives & Library lecture on Thomas Becket and Henry III, as part of Becket 2020 on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Pilgrims in the Becket Miracle Windows, Canterbury Cathedral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first presentation on\nWednesday was by Dean Irwin, who gave us his paper from the Jerusalem\nconference on \u2018Money Matters\u2019 he had attended over Christmas. Unusually for\nDean it did involve a few people rather than solely documents, although not\nmany! However he did begin by recapping about the way debt transactions had\nbeen authenticated through the tripartite format whereby the two parties to the\ndebt and the Crown each received a copy (indenture) of the transaction, the\ncreditor\u2019s seal affixed to the foot of the document.  He then brought in the idea of \u2018entanglement\u2019,\nas articulated by Elisheva Baumgarten, which can be seen as equating to\ncomplexity where matters become intertwined as the result of bringing together\ndifferent legal traditions, modes of recording, and language, for example. This,\nhe feels, is symptomatic of Jewish moneylending transactions in the 13th<\/sup>\ncentury and what he sought to explore was the reality of how, where, when etc\nsuch transactions took place. For example, the coming together of the two\nparties involved would have taken place at the archa<\/em> where the\ntripartite document was drawn up and interestingly Dean has found that very\noccasionally this took place even on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving on, Dean next explored the changes and complications that had occurred regarding Jews and the law during the same period, whether we are looking at internal Jewish disputes that were heard within the Jewish community at beth din<\/em>, except for certain serious offences that were tried in a Christian court \u2013 the Exchequer of the Jews \u2013 the jury comprising solely Jews if Christians weren\u2019t involved,  or cases involving money transactions, and thus Jews and Christians that were similarly held at the Exchequer of the Jews. Consequently, as Dean was keen to point, this complexity of royal and Jewish law can be viewed as having become entangled, the Crown prepared to borrow Jewish custom and codify it in what became the Statute of the Jewry (1233). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gathering before Professor Carpenter’s lecture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Such entanglement is also visible\nin the physical running of the archa<\/em> \u2013 the legal recording of the\nmoneylending transactions and the official storage of the third part of the\nagreement in a chest \u2013 for here, as Dean discussed, we have the two Christian\nand two Jewish chirographers, all leading members of their respective\ncommunities, and their two clerks, who were as at home drawing up these\nagreements as they were dealing with legal matters relating to civic government\nand transactions involving local citizens and\/or religious houses. Similarly,\nthe archa<\/em>, the chest, was likely to be stored in civic spaces, and, just\nlike the civic government\u2019s own chest that was to be stored in the mayor\u2019s\nhouse at Sandwich, at Canterbury in 1264 this meant the archa<\/em> was at the\nhouse of Simon Payable, a former bailiff of the city, when things got a little\ntricky politically!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dean also discussed ideas about language and the uses of Latin, Hebrew and French in a society in which orality and written records were similarly entangled in fascinating ways that were first discussed to a degree by Michael Clanchy in his ground-breaking work, From Memory to Written Record<\/em> (1979). More work of these issues and associated matters has been undertaken since then and I\u2019ll be coming back to this topic later in the year when Claire Bartram\u2019s edited collection on book production and scribal practice is published. Needless to say, Dean\u2019s presentation sparked numerous questions and comments before we moved on to explore the Gough Map of the United Kingdom, where we looked at the whole and then at Kent. However, I\u2019m going to leave that for this week, although thanks very much to members of the group for some very helpful ideas and suggestions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Edward the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster Abbey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So to Professor David Carpenter\u2019s lecture, chaired by Professor Louise Wilkinson that took place in a packed hall at the Cathedral Lodge. David began by describing the magnificent celebration on Tuesday 7 July 1220 of the Translation of Becket from the tomb in the crypt to the shrine in the Trinity Chapel, which he sees as Stephen Langton\u2019s crowning achievement. Such a linking of Becket and Langton is also seen through the latter\u2019s seal, albeit David\u2019s point was that in reality their ideas respecting the Crown and the Church were significantly different. For as he was as keen to point out, Langton was operating in a different world that necessitated the restoration of royal power, which would thereby strengthen the Church as part of a partnership, after the disastrous problems of civil war and the arrival of foreign powers during John\u2019s reign and the first years of the young Henry III. In this pursuit Langton was not alone, and he strongly supported Hubert de Burgh\u2019s efforts to retake royal power and authority from certain magnates, as well as recouping taxes in order to store the royal finances that had effectively collapsed during the civil war. Thus the great spectacle in July 1220 was part of this wider strategy that two years later would include the bishops taking a leading role in seeking to restore the royal lands, and then a year later an agreement with Hubert de Burgh that provided positions for two bishops within royal government \u2013 a long way from Becket\u2019s demarcation between Church and Crown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Becket’s martyrdom on Langton’s seal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To illustrate further Langton\u2019s\ndiffering stance to Becket, David took his audience through the development of\nMagna Carta from the first draft solely the product of the barons to the modified\nand reissued version of 1225. Among the changes along the way to the \u2018final\u2019\nversion was the inclusion of the first clause relating to the autonomy of the Church,\nespecially episcopal appointments, in the charter John sealed at Runnymede, which\nLangton was prepared to forego in 1225. By so doing, Langton had orchestrated the\ncreation of a compromise that all parties could accept, including the king who this\ntime was not forced to set his seal and which could be witnessed by all \u2018the\ngreat and the good\u2019 of England. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having discussed Langton and Becket, David turned his attention to Henry III and Becket, and here he felt there was still no meeting of minds whatever the young king may have taken from being part of the great occasion in 1220. David\u2019s new biography on Henry III is due out soon, and among the ideas he discussed from it was Henry III\u2019s piety vis-\u00e0-vis his 22 visits to Becket\u2019s shrine, albeit for half of these he was on his way to somewhere else, often the Kentish coast to travel abroad. Indeed as an adult, Becket for his own sake was rarely on Henry\u2019s radar and even when he did come to Canterbury and the shrine, his alms giving to paupers, something he seems to have seen as highly important, was never on the scale of such giving in London in relation to the saint he really favoured \u2013 Edward the Confessor. To further illustrate what David called Henry\u2019s somewhat edgy relationship towards Becket, he noted that Henry in the Becket Chapel at Winchester Castle had had installed images to the Confessor, a nice touch in this saintly rivalry!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A tile showing the Confessor giving a ring to a pilgrim<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In drawing this lecture to a\nconclusion, David believes most bishops and kings after Henry shared many of that\nking\u2019s views rather than siding with Becket, for as he said, there were plenty\nof senior churchmen in royal government in the late Middle Ages who saw this\nworking partnership as a very good thing! David received the audience\u2019s\napplause, and after a few questions and Dean Irwin\u2019s vote of thanks a second\nand perhaps even more appreciative round of applause with several people going\ndown to speak to him afterwards. Thus ended a fascinating lecture which\nprovided many thoughtful insights about the politics of the Translation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is Graduation Day for the first cohort of taught MA MEMS and Modern History students next Friday, so in the blog next week I will be revealing the winner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6665,"featured_media":7789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,822,1001,818,5762,982,1162,986,1029,817],"tags":[317,1105,6405,4762,4845,1937,1853,2554,7494,7069,229,7469,89,3809,3737,3598,1014,505,2698,329,61,1538,7498],"class_list":["post-7762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic","category-blog-posts","category-canterbury","category-events","category-heritage","category-kent","category-lecture","category-local-and-regional-history","category-middle-ages","category-news","tag-canterbury-cathedral","tag-canterbury-cathedral-archives-and-library","tag-canterbury-dean-and-chapter","tag-dean-irwin","tag-gough-map","tag-henry-iii","tag-historical-association","tag-hubert-de-burgh","tag-jerusalem","tag-kent-history-postgraduates","tag-king-john","tag-lawrence-lyle-memorial-prize","tag-magna-carta","tag-medieval-jews","tag-michael-clanchey","tag-professor-david-carpenter","tag-professor-louise-wilkinson","tag-sandwich","tag-st-edward-the-confessor","tag-stephen-langton","tag-thomas-becket","tag-westminster-abbey","tag-winchester-castle"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Sheila Sweetinburgh","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2020\/01\/DSC08508.jpg","postExcerpt":"It is Graduation Day for the first cohort of taught MA MEMS and Modern History students next Friday, so in the blog next week I will be revealing the winner […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7762"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7790,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7762\/revisions\/7790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}