Long-suffering scapegoats
The King’s Jews: money, massacre
and exodus in medieval England Robin R. Mundill CONTINUUM, 240PP, £25 ■Tablet Bookshop price £22.50
confidently assume that there were Jews in England long before the Norman Conquest. It’s an absolute certainty that the occasional late medieval and early-modern Jew arrived in English harbours after the infamous 1290 mass expulsion. As for the period in between, opportunities for sophisticated analysis are legion. Jews began to settle in significant numbers and the years between 1066 and 1290 represent a historical treasure trove for any student of European Judaism. It is a sad and sorry tale but is well worth the retelling. There is no better guide than Robin Mundill. His book is not short on tragedy and that is entirely appropriate. Jews in medieval England were well accustomed to abuse. They were falsely accused of all manner of crimes: the ritual killing of children, the despoilment of churches, mischievous magical practices. If the weather was awful or if natural disasters struck, the Jews were often held responsible. The one thing they had in their favour was royal protection, but even, perhaps especially, this was a mixed blessing. In feudal times, medieval monarchs perceived Jews as their possessions. Their attempts to balance the regal books and keep the royal coffers in good health also relied heavily on Jewish financiers. As Mundill reports,
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f ever there was a book for browsing in, this is it. Or rather, this is three of them, for it contains in one volume the previously published The Meaning of Tingo, Toujours Tingo, and a collection devoted to obscure English words, The Wonder of Whiffling. Adam Jacot de Boinod has ransacked a huge variety of dictionaries and lexicons for foreign words that have no equivalent in English. Fascinating foreign words are a hobby of mine, too, but he has carried it to a delightful extreme. He has collected not only individual words, but phrases and
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vidence (whether textual or archaeological) is meagre but we can
A plaque, unveiled in 1978 by the Jewish Historical Association at Clifford’s Tower in York Castle, commemorating the Jews who died in a medieval siege and massacre
English kings were irked when the English mob indulged in anti-Jewish persecution. When savage rhetoric gave way to slaughter in 1189 and 1190, Richard I fumed. This was not the fruit of tolerance or fellow-feeling, however. It was a fit of pique. There was protection but, as Mundill opines, it was really more like a latter-day protection racket. Strenuous efforts were made to chart the location and activities of every Jew in England. They were told where they could live and where they could be buried, their business transactions were carefully recorded and, in exchange for royal and noble care, they were exposed to outrageous financial demands. One chronicler told of the Jew who owed a small fortune to the Crown and, since he was behind on his payments, had a tooth removed every day until he coughed up his debt. Apocryphal or not, the story does a very good job of encapsulating the horrible assaults and indignities that England’s medieval Jews had to endure. The wonderful thing about Mundill’s
Odd spot for a picnic
I Never Knew There Was a Word for It Adam Jacot de Boinod
PENGUIN, 800PP, £12.99 ■Tablet Bookshop price £11.70
01420 592974
book is that it moves beyond a rehashing of this poignant story. He provides detailed accounts of everything from the wide-ranging business portfolio of Aaron of Lincoln to the furnishings and purposes of medieval synagogues. For all the public burnings of the Talmud, and for all the violence, medieval European Jews managed to create dynamic communities. Their experiences in Norman and Angevin England were depressingly predictable, but from London to Newcastle to the tin-industry towns of the West Country they struggled on. There were many tragic moments, of course but, as Mundill reminds us, there was also the business of workaday life: educating the children, trying to abide by dietary rules, deciding how much interaction with the unsympathetic Gentiles was acceptable and, in the case of Isaac of Colchester, completing the chores associated with running a vineyard. It is a fascinating chapter in English history and Mundill does it full justice. Jonathan Wright
expressions, like hiza ga warau, the Japanese for “the wobbly feeling you have in your legs after dashing up several flights of stairs” – literally, “my knees are laughing”. He also gives interesting insights into
other cultures, so koshatnik is the Russian for “a dealer in stolen cats” and desir is Malay for the sound of sand driven by the wind. In Punjabi, parson means either the day before yesterday or the day after tomorrow, and the Inuit tunillattukkuuq means “the act of eating at a cemetery”. If the book has a fault, it is that there is
no unified glossary, so that if you have found some priceless word in your browsing, you may not be able to find it again. The entries are organised under headings so that similar concepts can be compared. Along the way, you find colourful sayings and the equivalents (more or less) of English proverbs. Sarah Lawson
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