Sunday, 26 June 2011

• Throwing the Jew down the well....

  I learn from the BBC that the seventeen skeletons recently discovered down a medieval well in the English city of Norwich have been positively identified to be those of jews and moreover they include what is reasonably presumed to be whole families. (1)

  
  Naturally everyone's ears pricked up when the time period was pinpointed to the 12th or 13th centuries in Norwich: this is because this would date the bodies to around the time of the ritual murder of William of Norwich, which is the first ritual murder case that we have detailed information about.

  
  That said the BBC's declaration that the 'most likely explanation is that those down the well were Jewish and were probably murdered or forced to commit suicide' is rather perfunctory given that what hasn't been established is if all the bodies were pushed down the well at the same time. We need to bear in mind here that the medieval world was a very violent place and murders were not uncommon and throwing your victim down a well to get rid of the evidence was a fairly common practice at the time.

  
  What the BBC are doing is drawing a link between the time that the jews lived, that we know the jews were being attacked at this time by locals (although this; in spite of the BBC's insinuation, was nothing particularly unusual) and the famous William of Norwich ritual murder case. This is unfounded very simply, because it has not been demonstrated (merely presumed [which is understandable but not satisfactory]) that all the bodies are those of jews (only seven were successfully tested), that the bodies were all dumped in the well at the same time and that these bodies are in any way linked to the anti-jewish feeling in Norwich at the time.

  
  Sue Black goes a long way out of acceptable academic standards when she compares this discovery with ethnic cleansing as she claims happened to the jews in the well. She draws comparisons to all the old horror stories: 'bayoneting babies', 'mass executions' etc. Black should know better than to do that as she is prejudicing the discussion by using emotive language from the modern era to describe an event or series of events based on little to no actual evidence.

  
  Indeed this is rather nicely demonstrated by a more detailed article about how this premise of the bodies being part of an anti-jewish massacre came about in so far as we are told that:

  
  'In addition Jewish historian, Professor Miri Rubin confirmed to Dr Xanthe that the 13th Century was a time of religious persecution for the Jewish community: “In the late 12th and 13th Century as Europe becomes more Christian there was a real deepening of this sense of Jewish evil, so it is a picture of worsening and ultimately the age of expulsions.”

  
  These historical facts together with: natural death ruled out; the confirmation that the bodies being most likely of a Jewish family; the fact that neither Jewish or Christian communities would have treated members of their communities in such a disrespectful way at burial, leads Professor Sue Black to reach the conclusion that foul play of some kind was involved – either a mass murder or self inflicted death is likely.' (2)

  
  Lets think about this for a moment: the basis of the claim that this is the result of a wholesale anti-jewish massacre has been established based on Rubin's testimony; I won't call it evidence, that the time was one of 'persecution' for jews because Christians were becoming more Christian. This is; like Black, simply prejudicing the discussion by applying wide generalities to a very specific situation: now just because we find some jews in a well who may or may not have been murdered (suicide has not been ruled out) because they were jews (which hasn't been proven either merely presumed) it does not therefore mean that they died as part of an anti-jewish massacre as Black et al seem desperate to assume.

  
  The central piece of evidence for assuming such a massacre seems to be the location of the well as it was a 'few hundred yards' from a 'thriving jewish community'. This sounds absolutely compelling doesn't it?

  
  Think again: medieval Norwich was a fairly small place and a 'few hundred yards' is actually quite a substantial difference in the terms of the settlement itself as one can easily ascertain by consulting Lipmann's 'The Jews of Medieval Norwich'. (3) In essence what Black et al are probably doing here is presenting an a priori conclusion; based purely on the identification of the bodies as being jewish, as if it was a logical series of deductions from the evidence.

  
  We can show this by the fact that Black et al have immediately abandoned their own stated possibility of a suicide or another rationale for the deaths (without evidence for doing so) and gone straight to the most extreme conclusion of the bodies being a bit of medieval ethnic cleansing of the self-chosen.

  
  I always find this kind of academic blundering to be fairly amusing, but in this case it isn't quite so entertaining because it falls within the purview of my own research and I find it very hard to believe how irresponsible scientists and historians can be when something fits their preconceptions of the world resulting in them blabbering off half-cocked about the matter without first going through the properly scholarly channels of gaining a general consensus.

  
  I will be coming back to the case of William of Norwich and the expulsion of the jews shortly so I feel able to end my very short rejoinder to Black et al here.

  
  References
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13855238 [Last Accessed: 24/06/2011]
  http://www.medievalists.net/2011/06/23/bodies-of-17-jews-from-medieval-norwich-may-have-been-mass-murder-victims-scholars-believe/ [Last Accessed: 24/06/2011]
  V. D. Lipmann, 1967, 'The Jews of Medieval Norwich', 1st Edition, The Jewish Historical Society of England: London, pp. 11-48

  
   

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