England's Jews by John Tolan;

Author:John Tolan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)

Figure 8.  Commentary illustration for Revelation 5:2: Ecclesia and Lamb, book with seals, and Synagoga. Gulbenkian Apocalypse, c.1265–1270. Lisbon, Gulbenkian Museum, L. A. 139, fol. 4r.

Figure 9.  Lincoln Cathedral, the Jewish boy of Bourges, stained glass (c. 1220–1230).

These stories of Jewish hostility to Christians and of conspiracy to undermine Christendom circulated in England and elsewhere in Europe in the mid-thirteenth century, and help to explain why Henry III, when he arrived in Lincoln on 3 October, was ready to believe that Jews were responsible for the murder of young Hugh. As Gavin Langmuir emphasizes, “By 4 October little Hugh’s shrine and the fantasy that justified it had had a month to take firm root.”71 None of the sources speak of any formal accusation or any violent action taken against Lincoln Jews before that date. Bishop Henry of Lexington, Dean Richard de Gravesend, and the cathedral canons had encouraged the development of the cult of the young martyr. They do not seem to have sought the intervention of royal justice; it was Hugh’s mother who had pleaded with the king to punish those who she believed were responsible for the murder of her son. King Henry, in a hurry to return to London, delegated the investigation to John of Lexington, a close advisor, well-versed in both canon and civil law—and the brother of Bishop Henry of Lexington. If John were to find the Jews innocent of the accusation, the basis of the young martyr’s cult would be called into question, much to the chagrin, no doubt, of his brother the bishop and the cathedral canons. How different the outcome might have been if either Hugh of Avalon or Robert Grosseteste had still been bishop.

The belief that the Jews’ maliciously sought to kill Christian children, even to reenact the crucifixion on them, was well enough established that when Hugh disappeared, his mother suspected local Jews of having killed him. The discovery of his body apparently heightened the suspicion, and the cathedral chapter was happy to exploit this in order to be able to grace the cathedral with a new saint. And they would know what to say about Hugh and how he died: little did it matter that they knew nothing about the real circumstances of his death, accidental or criminal. They had the hagiographical models at hand from earlier stories of ritual murder, and they could quickly and easily produce narratives that would have begun to circulate in the days following the discovery of the boy’s body. It is this narrative that John of Lexington induced Copin to confirm.

In the Anglo-Norman poem, Hugh was captured and taken before a “great assembly of the richest Jews in England” (v. 69–70), led on a rope, like a sacrificial animal, by Jopin (i.e., Copin). They stripped him naked, “Just as the Jews had done to Jesus” (75). Jopin sold him for thirty silver pieces to another Jew, named Hagin, just as Judas had sold Jesus. The Jews then brought out a cross and nailed Hugh’s feet and hands to it.

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