| Saint William (Cult Supressed) |
|
|---|---|
| "Martyr" | |
| Born | 1132 Norwich |
| Died | 22 March 1144 Norwich |
| Honored in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Canonized | Never officially canonized. |
| Feast | March 26 (Removed from the Universal Calendar)[1] |
| Catholic cult suppressed | After the Congregation[1] |
William of Norwich (c. 1132 – March 22, 1144) was an English boy whose death was, at the time, attributed to the Jewish community of Norwich. It is the first known medieval accusation of ritual murder against Jews.
William was an apprentice tanner who regularly came into contact with Jews and visited their homes as part of his trade. His death was unsolved; the local community of Norwich attributed the boy's death to the Jews, though the local court would not convict them for lack of proof. William was shortly thereafter acclaimed as a saint in Norwich, with miracles attributed to him.
William's story was told in The Life and Miracles of William of Norwich,[2] a multi-volume Latin work by Thomas of Monmouth, a monk in the Norwich Benedictine monastery. Thomas started The Life in 1149/50; he completed volume 7 by 1173.[3] Jessop, one of the editors of Thomas' work, describes Thomas as belonging to the class of those who are "deceivers and being deceived."[4]
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The Catholic Encyclopedia[5] states the facts of the case, as accounted by Thomas, as follows:
The story of a servant woman is presented:
Unlike later tales of ritual murder, the account does not mention the collection of William's blood nor the reason for the alleged ritual murder.
A Jewish community is thought to have been established in Norwich by 1135, although a man called 'Isaac' is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Most lived in a Jewish quarter or Jewry, located in what is now the Haymarket and White Lion Street.[6] This is very close to Norwich Castle, a pattern seen in other English towns which may have been for reasons of security. The Norwich community subsequently became one of the most important in England. In 1144, William's body was found upon Mousehold Heath, an extensive woodland to the north-east of Norwich that still exists. Court records suggest that the boy was tortured before his murder (it was not the custom at the time to perform an autopsy). With no conviction by the court, the local community revolted against the authorities and attempted to form a free-court to hold a trial against the accused. Only the intervention of the local sheriff, representing Stephen, King of England, saved the Jewish suspects from the mob.
The motive of the clergy – in particular, William de Turbeville (Bishop of Norwich 1146-1174) – to establish a cultus may have been partly pecuniary. De Turbeville encouraged Thomas of Monmouth, a Benedictine monk who lived in Norwich, to write The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich. Monmouth arrived in Norwich just after the events he describes.[3] There was never any papal canonization of William, his cult always being "popular" rather than official.
Before any attempt at an autopsy as to how the boy met his death, the Prior tried to get the body for Lewes Priory in Sussex, for he realized that it might become an object ‘of conspicuous veneration and worship.’
There is little evidence of a flourishing cult of William in Norwich, although offerings were made at his tomb until the sixteenth century. There was a scholars' guild dedicated to St William in the Norfolk town of Lynn.
As a result of the feelings generated by the William ritual murder story and subsequent intervention by the authorities on behalf of the accused, the growing suspicion of collusion between the ruling class and Jews only fueled the general anti-Jewish and anti-King Stephen mood of the population. When Richard obtained power it was felt a new reform of national life would occur. Consequently, with the increase in national opinion in favor of a Crusade, and the conflation of all non-Christian others in the Medieval Christian imagination, the Jewish deputation attending the coronation of Richard the Lionheart in 1189 was attacked by the crowd.
A widespread attack began on the Jewish population in London and York leading to massacres of Jews at London and York. The attacks were soon followed by others throughout England. As a result of Norwich's local nobility's partisanship on behalf of Crusader King Richard's opponents, the local yeomanry and peasantry revolted against the lords and attacked their supporters especially Norwich's Jewish community. On Feb 6 1190, all Norwich Jews who didn't escape to the support of the local castle were slaughtered in their village. The Jews that did escape to the castle committed mass suicide. Jews were expelled from all of England in 1290 and repatriated to Spain, Italy, Greece and elsewhere. Jews were not officially allowed to settle in England until 1655 when Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell asked Parliament to allow Jews renouncing Papal sovereignty and who were fleeing Catholic persecution in the Low Countries and France to settle under writ of Parliament.
This article is based upon text (used with permission) from Aaron of Lincoln 1125-1186: the life and times of a Medieval Jew by Mae E. Sander.
See Anthony Bale, The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1350-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 2006) for a full discussion of saint cults like that of William of Norwich in medieval England.