Ritual Murder?
How an incompetent murder investigation in the Middle Ages sparked a viral conspiracy theory
By anonymous rood screen painting of William of Norwich - St Peter and St Paul, Eye, Suffolk, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7042867
I grew up in Norwich, a beautiful city in the East of England. If you have never been there, it is well worth a visit. Today’s column, though, isn’t about its twin cathedrals, its castle and other medieval buildings or the nearby Norfolk Broads. Instead, we will look at a dark story from the city’s past.
There was at least one Jewish inhabitant of Norwich at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, shortly after the Norman Conquest. A larger community of French-speaking Jews was established by 1135. Most lived in an area called at the time the Jewry, which was close to the Norman castle.
William of Norwich was a 12-year-old apprentice tanner of Anglo-Saxon heritage, who was born around the time the Jewish community was establishing roots in Norwich. He disappeared in Easter Week in 1144 and his body was found on Mousehold Heath, which was outside the medieval city. He had been murdered violently.
Rumours began to fly that the local Jewish community might have had something to do with William’s death. He had visited his aunt before his death in the company of an unknown man. She was suspicious and asked her daughter to follow them. The cousin said that they entered the house of a Jewish man (tanners had regular contact with Jewish merchants).
This being the Middle Ages, the Bishop of Norwich asked members of the Jewish community to submit to a trial by ordeal. However, the sheriff said the church had no jurisdiction over Norwich’s Jews and sheltered the community in the castle until the atmosphere became calmer.
The affair slowly simmered for a few years afterwards. Some local Christians built up a cult around William, ascribing miracles to him, and he was acclaimed as a saint. The Bishop wanted to encourage the cult of a local saint and invited Thomas of Monmouth, a Benedictine monk, to Norwich to investigate the murder a few years later.
Thomas of Monmouth’s main witness was Theobald of Cambridge, a former Jew who became a monk. He spun a yarn about the murder being a human sacrifice as commanded by Jewish texts. Modern researchers have noted that no Jewish texts commanding human sacrifice have ever been found and that the Torah explicitly bans murder. Although little evidence has survived the centuries, historians think the crime was probably committed by a sadistic rapist or was maybe a kidnapping gone wrong.
In 1173, nearly 30 years after the murder, Thomas of Monmouth wrote a hagiography of William, which focused on a number of alleged miracles, as well as discussing the murder. A single surviving manuscript was discovered in 1896. The book is the first example of the Blood Libel in Western Europe - a conspiracy theory that Jews use the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes.
Although Thomas of Monmouth’s book popularized the Blood Libel, he is unlikely to have invented the tale. There are some fleeting references to conspiracy theories about Jewish people murdering children in a handful of ancient texts, particularly in one by a Greco-Egyptian author called Apion, who had lived more than a thousand years earlier.
However, Thomas of Monmouth mainstreamed the conspiracy theory, as we would say nowadays. A number of other child murders were ascribed to Jewish communities in the years following Willaim’s death. These led to massacres of Jews, beginning in London and York and later spreading throughout England. Many of Norwich’s Jews were murdered in 1190, although others took refuge in the castle. England’s Jews were expelled in 1290 and none were allowed to settle until 1655.
The Blood Libel ended up going viral. Allegations that European Jews had poisoned wells spread like wildfire during the Black Death. By the 15th century, the Blood Libel was commonplace throughout Europe and survived for centuries afterwards. The Nazis used the claim systematically in their antisemitic propaganda.
Although the Catholic Church has repudiated the conspiracy theory in recent years, removing one murder victim called Simon of Trent from the list of saints in 1965, the Blood Libel has taken on a new lease of life in the Middle East.
One of the strangest twists in the tale is that the conspiracy theory has been remixed in recent years by followers of QAnon, a strange conspiracy cult based on the idea that Donald Trump is battling a Satanic cabal of cannibals and pedophiles. QAnon followers might not always spell out their antisemitic ideas, but they are often keen to give a nudge and a wink to racists by emphasizing the alleged criminality of people of Jewish heritage like George Soros and the Rothschilds.
It seems incredible, but the explosive combination of ancient rumours, incompetent murder investigations from hundreds of years ago and outright xenophobia against ethnic minorities continue to thrive in the modern world. The comments are open. See you next week!
Further Reading
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