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Getting the punchline: deciphering anti-Jewish humour in Anglo-Norman England

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03044181.2012.714345

1873-1279

Kati Ihnat,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

Abstract The idea that laughter was impossible for medieval monks has been largely overturned in recent decades, but the paucity of sources and the cultural specificity of humour still makes understanding their sense of humour difficult. William of Malmesbury, a twelfth-century English Benedictine, nevertheless provides a rare glimpse of what made monks laugh in his collection of Marian miracles, the Miracula sanctae Mariae. Introducing one of his miracle stories as ‘a great joke that will have readers laughing out loud’, William gives us invaluable information about the way humour could infiltrate the most unlikely of genres, in this case one generally thought to be devotional and edificatory in nature. The story is also virulently anti-Jewish. By placing the joke in its historical context, exploring the themes of corruption, political weakness and interaction between Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England, we can understand what this joke meant and what it can in turn reveal about the world that produced it. Keywords: JewsJewish-Christian relationsVirgin MaryWilliam of Malmesburymiracle literaturehumourmonasticism Acknowledgements I would like to thank Chris Wilson, Miri Rubin and the members of Ecclesiastical History Society who heard and commented so usefully on an earlier version of this paper. I would also like to thank Michael Winterbottom for kindly allowing me to see a provisional translation of the miracles, which helped me with the translations in this paper. Notes 1 ‘Quia enim de Judaeis actio est, quiddam quod de Tolosanis Judaeis accidit narrare volo, iocundum sane, et quod legentium torqueat ora risu.’ The edition of William's miracles used here is El Libro ‘De laudibus et miraculis sanctae Mariae’ de Guillermo de Malmesbury, ed. J.M. Canal (Rome: Alma Roma Libreria Editrice, 1968), here 74, hereafter William of Malmesbury, Miracula. An unpublished edition, with translation and extensive commentary, is found in Peter Carter, ‘An Edition of William of Malmesbury's Treatise on the Miracles of the Virgin Mary’ (unpublished DPhil diss., University of Oxford, 1959). All translations are nevertheless mine unless otherwise stated. 2 Studies of laughter in the monastery include Jacques Le Goff, ‘Laughter in the Middle Ages’, in A Cultural History of Humour, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 40–53; Jacques Le Goff, ‘Rire au moyen âge’, Les Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques 3 (1989): 1–14; Jacques le Goff, ‘Le rire dans les règles monastiques du haut moyen âge’, in Haut moyen-âge: culture, éducation et société. Études offertes à Pierre Riché, ed. C. Lepelley and others (Nanterre et La Garenne-Colombes: Éditions européennes Érasme, 1990), 93–103; and Irven M. Resnick, ‘Risus monasticus: Laughter and Medieval Monastic Culture’, Revue Bénédictine 97 (1987): 90–100. The most notable contribution is perhaps Martha Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin Tradition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), which also contains a useful summary of historiographical approaches to medieval humour, 177–212. Most recently, see Gerd Althoff and Christel Meier-Staubach, Ironie im Mittelalter: politische Argumentation und Mündlichkeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011), 123–46, on the use of irony by monks. Such works have completely overturned the faulty division established by Mikhail Bakhtin between lay and clerical culture, the former described as having a monopoly on humorous expression in the late middle ages and early-modern period: Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984). 3 Guy Halsall highlighted the degree to which this is true in his ‘Introduction’, in Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Guy Halsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7. 4 Jonathan Wilcox, ed., Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Herman Baert, Guido Latré and Werner Verbeke, eds., Risus mediaevalis: Laughter in Medieval Literature and Art (Leuven: Peeters, 2003); Halsall, ed., Humour, History and Politics. Although the subject is laughter rather than humour, see also Albrecht Classen, ed., Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behaviour, its Meanings and Consequences (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010). The need to distinguish between laughter and humour – the two not necessarily found together – is urged by Jeannine Horowitz and Sophia Menache, L'humour en chaire: le rire dans l’église médiévale (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1994), 13. 5 This was behind Chris Humphrey's call to arms against what he saw as the all too quick resort to theory when tackling the meaning and social function especially of carnivalesque behaviour in the Middle Ages, but his plea might equally apply to literary humour. See Chris Humphrey, The Politics of Carnival (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). Inspiration is obviously evident from Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1999), especially 75–106. 6 ‘Magnoque a nobilibus adolescentulis emitur, quis eorum feriat, vel si potest, excerebret tanto spectaculo expositum caput.’ ‘The right to [hit the Jew] was auctioned off to the most valiant of the young nobles, who would, if he were able, crack the exposed skull with great flair.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 75. 7 For the dating of the collection, see Philip Shaw, ‘The Dating of William of Malmesbury's Miracles of the Virgin’, Leeds Studies in English 37 (2006): 391–405. 8 On which, see Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 142–55; and also Gabriela Signori, ‘La bienheureuse polysémie, miracles et pèlerinages à la Vierge: pouvoir thaumaturgique et modèles pastoraux (Xe–XIIe siècles)’, in Marie: le culte de la Vierge dans la société médiévale, ed. Dominique Iogna-Prat, Éric Palazzo and Daniel Russo (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996), 599–604. 9 Richard W. Southern, ‘The English Origins of the “Miracles of the Virgin”’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958): 176–216; and, more recently, Juan Carlos Bayo, ‘Las colecciones universales de milagros de la Virgen hasta Gonzalo de Berceo’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 81 (2004): 849–71. 10 William wrote the lives of Saints Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract at the request of Prior Warin of Worcester and the monks of Glastonbury, for whom he also wrote a history of their abbey. William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); William of Malmesbury, The Early History of Glastonbury, trans. John Scott (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1981). The life and works of Aldhelm, founder of Malmesbury, received ample attention, particularly with respect to his miracles, in William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, ed. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson. 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1: 501–79. On Dominic's lives of the saints of Evesham abbey, Odulf, Wistan and Ecgwin, see J.C. Jennings, ‘The Writings of Prior Dominic of Evesham’, English Historical Review 77 (1962): 298–304. For book production during Anselm's abbacy, principally for St Edmund, see Barbara Abou-el-Haj, ‘Bury St Edmunds Abbey Between 1070 and 1124: a History of Property, Privilege and Monastic Art Production’, Art History 6 (1983): 1–29; R.M. Thomson, ‘Early Romanesque Book-Illustration in England: the Dates of the Pierpont Morgan “Vitae sancti Edmundi” and the Bury Bible’, Viator 2 (1971): 212–20. On miracle writing more generally in this period, albeit without mention of the Marian collections, see Rachel Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate: Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting in High Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 11 For church dedications to the Virgin in Anglo-Saxon England, see Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 122–38. For the cult of Mary as developed by Benedictines in the post-Conquest period, see Antonia Gransden, ‘The Cult of St Mary at Beodricisworth and then in Bury St Edmunds Abbey to c.1150’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004): 627–53; Nigel Morgan, ‘Texts and Images of Marian Devotion in English Twelfth-Century Monasticism, and their Influence on the Secular Church’, in Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Benjamin Thompson (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1999), 117–36. 12 The focus of the earliest collections was nevertheless mainly clerical, and many of the stories feature liturgical practices that would only have been possible for religious professionals. This would radically change in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they took on numerous stories about lay individuals. 13 Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages, 197, 201. 14 On which, see Horowitz and Menache, L'humour en chaire, 141–86. 15 On the difference, though slight, see Claude Bremont, Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt, L’‘exemplum’. Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), esp. 36–7, 50–4. 16 Connie L. Scarborough, ‘Laughter and the Comedic in a Religious Text: the Example of the Cantigas de Santa Maria’, in Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. Classen, 281–94. While Scarborough's article is of direct relevance, particularly in highlighting the comedic potential of Marian miracle stories, her assumptions about which stories were funny could be questioned to some extent on the basis that they do not explicitly state their humorous intention. We are warned against making such leaps of judgement by Marie-Françoise Notz, ‘Tel est pris qui croyait prendre, ou: les auteurs médiévaux nous font-ils rire malgré eux?’, in Le rire au moyen âge dans la littérature et dans les arts, ed. Thérèse Boucher and Hélène Charpentier (Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 1990), 227–35; and also Armand Strubel, ‘Le rire au moyen âge’, in Précis de littérature française du moyen âge, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1983), 186–213. This is why William's joke is of such historical value. 17 ‘Nec vacabit a proposito narratio quod sit Mariae beatissimae gloria, probissime vindicata filii sui iniuria.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 74. 18 ‘Dominum nostrum Ihesum Christum cuiusque piissimam et dulcissimam genitricem Mariam in primis precibus totius devotionis ad adiutorium Christianorum flecti et in communi omnium procerum totiusque populi auctoritate et favore apud comitem agi ut non solum nobilis Christianus sicut laude dignus ab omni reatu iudicii sit liber verum etiam ut cunctorum iudicio quasi pro lege decernatur omni anno in posterum unum ex Judeis per vindicta eo die exhibendum qui exponeret Christiano collum passurus vel alapam vel colaphum ut discerent Judei quam stultum esset Christo improperare convicium.’ Oxford, Balliol College, MS 240, f. 155. 19 ‘Exempla dico pietatis eius, et miracula, quorum nec exilis, nec frivola exhibetur mundo copia. Nam ratiocinationes quidem perfectorum fidem excitant; sed simplicium spem et caritatem accendit miraculorum narratio, ut torpens ignis iniecto roboratur olio. Ratiocinationes docent eam miseris misereri posse; exempla vero miraculorum docent velle quod posse.’ ‘I give examples of her piety and miracles, whose abundance are neither meagre nor useless. For indeed, reasoned arguments encourage the faith of perfected (i.e. learned) men, but the telling of miracles enflames hope and charity in the simple, as a dying flame is strengthened by the pouring on of oil. Reasoned arguments can teach that she takes pity on the wretched; examples of miracles teach that she actually desires to do so.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 63. 20 These are, in order, ‘Theophilus’, ‘Toledo’, ‘the Jews of Toulouse’, ‘Theodore and Abraham’, ‘the Boy of Bourges’, ‘the Virgin's image insulted’, and Jews also get a mention in ‘Hildefonsus’, who is credited as having written an important polemic against them in support of Mary's virginity, ante, in and post partum. 21 This was remarked by Robert W. Frank, ‘Miracles of the Virgin, Medieval Anti-Semitism and the Prioress’ Tale’, in The Wisdom of Poetry: Essays in Early English Literature in Honor of Morton W. Bloomfield, eds. Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1982), 177–88. He estimates – though on the basis of what collections is unclear – that 7.5% of all stock Marian stories involve Jews. 22 The tradition of depicting Jews as enemies of the Virgin goes back to the fifth and sixth centuries, possibly earlier. The apocryphal texts describing Mary's early life and death, such as the Protevangelium Jacobi, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Transitus beatae Mariae, feature Jews doubting the virgin birth, and trying to steal and burn her body at her Dormition. Stephen Shoemaker has suggested that both Christian and Jewish narrative traditions about the Virgin likely arose in an atmosphere of intense debate and proselytising between the two religious groups in the early Christian East. See, for example, Stephen J. Shoemaker, ‘“Let Us Go and Burn her Body”: the Image of the Jews in the Early Dormition Traditions’, Church History 68 (2004): 775–823, and idem, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 23 Discussion of the place of Jews in Marian miracles, most especially the Theophilus legend, in the Middle English collections was undertaken by Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Miracles of the Virgin in Medieval England: Law and Jewishness in Marian Legends (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010). 24 ‘Ita Judei Toletani exterminati, ceteri per Hispaniam tempore Sisebuti regis, ad quem scripsit sanctus Isidorus Librum de natura rerum, vel Christiani facti, vel eiecti. Sed postea, ut fit, ad malum declivioribus saeculis, inmane quantum recrevere, Christianorum quidem ludibrio, sed fortunatarum suarum contuitu, numquam inde discessionem meditati, ut sequenti clarebit exemplo.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 73. 25 The reference to Jews to highlight anti-Christian behaviour in miracle stories, generally, was pointed out by Scarborough, ‘Laughter and the Comedic’, 291–4. 26 Juvenal, Satires, 3. 7, 145: G.G. Ramsay, Juvenal and Persius: with an English Translation (London: William Heinemann, 1918). 27 ‘Apud mortales enim solae divitiae commendant hominem, quibus qui caret, sordet. Ex gazis pensatur religio, opes valere putantur, in eloquio rara est, vel potius nulla, in tenui facundia panno. Olim enim valebat homini aliquid scire; modo grandis est barbaries nihil habere. Denique sola est pecunia hoc tempore quae levare putetur humanas sollicitudines, et quae, specie tranquillitatis, humanas demulceat mentes. Turpissime omnino et vanissime.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 136. 28 ‘Refriguit ex illo die in illa urbe Judaeorum fervor indomitus, qui ante in nos grassabatur.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 136. 29 ‘… ostendens in hoc quantum ab aequo dissideat oppulentorum hominum arrogantia, qui pauperum non grate suscipiunt, sed ingrate extorquent obsequia.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 136. 30 Peter Carter pointed this out in his article, ‘The Historical Content of William of Malmesbury's Miracles of the Virgin’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. J.M. Wallace-Hadrill and R.H.C. Davis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 150. 31 J. Bollandus and G. Henschenius, eds., revised J. Carnandet and others, Acta Sanctorum, revised edn. 66 vols. in 67 (Brussels: Greuse, 1863–1925, [electronic edition, Cambridge, 1999–2000]), 1 May: 143. 32 ‘Quo tempore Ugo, capellanus Aimerici vicecomitis Rocacardensis, cum eodem seniore suo Tolose in Pascha adfuit, et colaphum Judeo, sicut illic omni Pascha semper moris est, imposuit, et cerebrum ilico et oculos ex capite perfido ad terram effudit; qui Judeus statim mortuus, a sinagoga Judeorum de basilica sancti Stephani elatus, sepulturae datus est.’ Ademar of Chabannes, Ademari Cabannensis Chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 129 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 132–6: III, 52: 1–14. Bourgain noted in his commentary that Ademar's account of the tradition was the first, although his description of it as a long-lived tradition is probably exaggerated. 33 ‘In hac urbe multitudo sceleratae gentis habitans tempore Willelmi antiqui comitis, qui Raimundum genuit …’: William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 135. Peter Carter has noted that William nevertheless got some of the historical detail wrong, making Count William III the father of Raymond of St Gilles, when he was in fact Raymond's grandfather. Carter, ‘Historical Content’, 190. For William's literary sources, see R.M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003). 34 ‘Leddam etiam quam a festivitate Omnium Sanctorum usque ad festum beati Saturnini episcopus in borgo pro colafo Judeorum datam, iniuste canonicis et decano auferebat, absolvo, reddo, et dimitto clericis beati Saturnini presentibus et futuris.’ ‘The fee given between the feast of All Saints [1 November] and the feast of St Saturnin, bishop of this city [29 November], in lieu of/for the slap of the Jews, has unjustly been taken away from the canons and dean. I release them from the charge and return and distribute it to the clerics of St Saturnin, present and future.’ C. Douais, ed., Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Saint-Sernin de Toulouse (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1887), 200–1. 35 He was a prolific historian, as will become clear. For the historical value of his miracle stories, in particular, see Carter, ‘Historical Content’. 36 ‘Insolentiae vel potius inscientiae contra Deum hoc fuit signum. Iudei qui Londoniae habitabant, quos pater e Rotomago illuc traduxerat, eum in quadam sollemnitate adierunt xenia offerentes. Quibus delinitus etiam ausus est animare ad conflictum contra Christianos, “per vultum de Luca” pronuntians quod si vicissent in eorum sectam transiret. Magno igitur timore episcoporum et clericorum res acta est, pia sollicitudine fidei Christianae timentium. Et de hoc quidem certamine nichil Iudei preter confusionem retulerunt, quamvis multotiens iactarint se non ratione sed factione superatos.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum (The History of the English Kings), eds. and trans. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thompson and M. Winterbottom. 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 1: 562; iv. 317. 37 ‘Insolentiae in Deum Iudei suo tempore dedere inditium, semel apud Rotomagum ut quosdam ab errore suo refugos ad Iudaismum revocarent muneribus inflectere conati; alia vice apud Lundoniam contra episcopos nostros in certamen animati, quia ille ludibundus, credo, dixisset quod, si vicissent Christianos apertis argumentationibus confutatos …’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, 1: 562; iv. 317. 38 On the use of each other's work by twelfth-century historians, see Martin Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. Davis and Wallace-Hadrill, 101–26. 39 Eadmer of Canterbury, History of Recent Events, trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet (London: The Cresset Press, 1964), 105. For the whole story, see 103–5. 42 ‘Nullus dives nisi nummularius, nullus clericus nisi causidicus, nullus presbiter nisi, ut verbo parum Latino utar, firmarius. Cuiuscumque conditionis homunculus, cuiuscumque criminis reus, statim ut de lucro regis appellasset, audiebatur; ab ipsis latronis faucibus resolvebatur laqueus si promisisset regale commodum.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, 1: 558–61; iv. 314. 4. 40 Sally Vaughn, ‘“By the face of Lucca”: the Marvellous Jesting of King William Rufus’ (paper presented at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2010). Sally Vaughn argued that William was very much aware of Rufus’ tendency to jest, and appreciated the king's humour as a sophisticated political tool. Nevertheless, the first line of the passage suggests otherwise. 41 See, for example William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, 1: 554–7; iv. 312. 1–3. 43 ‘Vilesceret famae cura, Dei respectus cederet, et pecunia iustitiam perverteret!’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, 1: i. 54. 44 ‘Sed ita omnia nostro tempore in Anglia mutavit et pervertit ambitio, ut res quas antiqui viri liberaliter contulerunt monasteriis magis dispergantur pro possessorum ingluvie quam famulentur monachorum, hospitum, egenorum vitae.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, 1: ii. 86. 2. 46 ‘Interim Judaei, tum per se tum per patronos, aures comitis infestare, aurum polliceri, nihil quod ad dedecus nostrum pertineret omittere. Et quid non obtinet pecuniae execranda fames? Iam comes paene in amorem nefandorum traductus acriore in virum illustrem ultione minari, qui pacem curiae infregisset suae.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 75. 48 ‘Si dominus comes Christianum vel verbo premeret ob Judaei interitum, praesertim natalium nobilitate splendidum, qui Mathathiae sequax, legis Dei habuisse zelum quod laudi alius duceret illum pro auro velle effeminare.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 75. 45 ‘In hac urbe multitudo sceleratae gentis habitans tempore Willelmi antiqui comitis … ita effrenis erat ut pro lascivia opum suarum, principis abuteretur lenitate.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 74. 47 ‘Si id comes non concesserit, ab omnibus relinquendum, ut Christi negligentem iniurias et semiiudaeum.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 75. 49 This is what happened to William of Eu, who was accused of treachery, although William of Malmesbury refers to him as having been made extesticulatus not effeminatus. Perhaps here we see more of William's irony, in describing an effeminate king imposing such a penalty on his enemies. William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, 1: 564–5; iv. 319. 2. 50 ‘Malens Judaeis adversari quam tot optimatum discessu periclitari’: William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 75. 51 R.M. Thomson, ‘Satire, Irony, and Humour in William of Malmesbury’, in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, ed. C.J. Mews, C.J. Nederman and R.M. Thomson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 115–27. 52 Both Peter Carter and R.M. Thomson have remarked upon it. Cf. Carter, ‘Historical Content’, 153, and Thomson, ‘Satire, Irony and Humour’, 123. 53 For the early history, see Albert M. Hyamson, A History of the Jews in England (London: Methuen & Co., 1928), 1; Robin R. Mundill, The King's Jews: Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England (London: Continuum International, 2010), 2–4; Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 112–14. 54 R.B. Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190 (York: York University Press, 1974), 1; Hyamson, History of the Jews, 4. 55 Norman Golb, ‘Les juifs de Normandie à l’époque d'Anselme’, in Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe–XIIe siècles: études Anselmiennes (IVe session). Colloque organisé par le CNRS sous la présidence de Jean Pouilloux, Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec, Le Bec-Hellouin, 11–16 juillet 1982, ed. Raymonde Foreville (Paris: Éditions CNRS, 1984), 152. 56 For evidence of this, see Joe Hillaby, ‘The London Jewry: William to John’, Jewish Historical Studies 33 (1995): 1–44; Cecil Roth, The Jews of Medieval Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 2; Bernard Susser, The Jews of South-West England: the Rise and Decline of their Medieval and Modern Communities (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1993), 4; Harold Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickonson University Press, 1982), 16; Dobson, Jews of Medieval York, 4; Paul Hyams, ‘The Jews in Medieval England 1066–1290’, in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Hanna Vollrath (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 174. Only Albert Hyamson argues, giving no evidence for his claims, that there were Jews in Oxford by 1075, in Cambridge by 1073, and in Winchester and London by 1115. Hyamson, History of the Jews, 14–16. 57 This seems to be confirmed by the proximity of Jewish communities to castles, cf. V.D. Lipman, ‘Jews and Castles in Medieval England’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 28 (1984): 1–19. For a recent assessment, see Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom (Harlow: Longman, 2011), 90. 58 ‘It should be known that all Jews, in whichever kingdom they may be, ought to be under the guardianship and protection of the liege king; nor can any one of them subject himself to any wealthy person without the license of the king, because the Jews themselves and all their possessions are the king's. But if someone detains them or their money, the king shall demand [them] as his own property if he wishes and is able.’ ‘Sciendum est quod omnes Judaei, in quocumque regno sint sub tutela et defensione regis ligii debent esse; neque aliquis eorum potest se subdere alicui diviti sine licencia regis, quia ipsi Judaei et omnia sua regis sunt. Quod si aliquis detinuerit eos vel pecuniam eorum, requirat rex tanquam suum proprium si vult et potest.’ Bruce O'Brien, ed. and trans. God's Peace and King's Peace: the Laws of Edward the Confessor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 184–5. The laws were attributed to the fourth year of William I's reign, i.e. 1070. 59 Robert C. Stacey, ‘Jewish Lending and the Medieval English Economy’, in A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c.1300, ed. Richard H. Britnell and Bruce M.S. Campbell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 82. 60 Stacey, ‘Jewish Lending’, 77. 61 The sum total of their debts was £2000, which represents 8.7% of the total royal income via taxation for that year, a significant sum, even if they were not able to pay it back in full. We can compare this to the £2000 owed the same year by Rannulf II des Gernons, earl of Chester, who had more than one third of the kingdom in his possession, and we get an idea of their general level of wealth. J. Hunter, ed., Magnum rotulum scacarii vel magnum rotulum pipae de anno tricesimo-primo regni Henrici primi (London: Record Commission, 1833), 149. 62 Anna Sapir Abulafia and G. R. Evans, eds., The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster (London: British Academy, 1986), 9. See also Hillaby, ‘London Jewry’, 3. 63 ‘Jacob Judaeus et uxor eius reddiderunt compotum de LX marcos argentei pro placitu quod fuit inter eos et homines abbatis Westmonasterii regi se adquietaverat de LX marcis argentei per breve regis. Et quieti sunt.’ Hunter, ed., Magnum rotulum scacarii, 146. 64 E.W. Williamson, ed., The Letters of Osbert of Clare, Prior of Westminster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929), 100, 107 (letters 24 and 28). 65 Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, eds. and trans. Diane Greenway and Jane Sayers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4, 10. On the reconstruction of Bury St Edmunds during the abbacy of Anselm, see Bernard Gauthiez, ‘The Planning of the Town of Bury St Edmunds: a Probably Norman Origin’, in Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Economy, ed. A. Gransden. British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 20 (Leeds: British Archaeological Association, 1998), 93. 66 ‘Idoneus monachorum marsupia evacuare, undecumque nummos rapere’. William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, 1: v. 265. 1. 67 There is no need for William to have known Jews personally, but they were certainly not just figments of his imagination, as suggested by Gabriela Signori; their presence and active role in post-Conquest England cannot be ignored as a factor in shaping his literary vision. Gabriela Signori, ‘Judenfeindschaft ohne Juden. Die Marienmirakel des englischen Benediktinermönchs Wilhelm von Malmesbury (ca. 1095 bis ca. 1143)’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 46 (2011): 13. 68 ‘Adeo ut festivis diebus ecclesiam intrarent, Christianis immixti, et illic, audita cachinis excipientes, domibus suis inferrent.’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 74. 69 Northrop Frye, ‘Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes’, in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, ed. Northrop Frye (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). 45. He continues: ‘We pass the boundary of art when this symbol becomes existential, as it does in the black man of the lynching, the Jew of the pogrom, the old woman of a witch hunt, or anyone picked up at random by a mob.’ With William, we have not passed this boundary – yet; England had its share of pogroms in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 70 ‘… exhibet Judaeus sorte ductus Christiano collum, crine a suis tonsus, ne per capillos prendatur, et mele litus, ut liquoris lubricum frustretur ferientis ictum, quamvis Christiani quoque semper aliquid inveniant quo commenta Judaeorum refellant.’ ‘… A Jew chosen by lot and led by a Christian should show his neck, shorn by his people (in order that he might not be taken by the hair), and smeared with honey (such that the blow of the striker might be hindered by the liquid, although the Christians in turn always discover something by which to counter the trickery of the Jews).’ William of Malmesbury, Miracula, 75. 71 ‘Eratque spectaculum quod videnti cachinnum excuteret, cum Turchus, in collo Christiani pugno percussus, byzantinos evomeret.’ William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, 1: 678–9; iv. 380. 4. 72 See Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages, 198. 73 Halsall, ‘Introduction’, in Humour, History and Politics, ed. Halsall, 12. 74 The vision of Jewish history in medieval Europe as one of constant persecution and suffering, as first articulated in the writings of Heinrich Graetz and with a powerful hold over historians since, has been redressed in recent works that emphasise interaction, cultural cross-pollination, and generally peaceful co-existence between Christians and Jews albeit punctuated by periods of violence. See David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), and Robert Chazan, Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). The degree to which this was the case of course depends heavily on the specific historical and geographical circumstances, which must be kept in mind at all times, as has been the intention of this paper.