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Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the EarlyDissemination of the MythAuthor(s): John M. McCullohSource: Speculum, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 698-740Published by: Medieval Academy of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3040759Accessed: 15/10/2010 09:36

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Jewish Ritual Murder:William of Norwich, Thomas of

Monmouth, and the EarlyDissemination of the Myth

By John M. McCulloh

One of the most enduring contributions of the Middle Ages to the history ofWestern intolerance is the myth that Jews practice the ritual murder of Christianchildren. From the twelfth century to the twentieth and from eastern Europe toNorth America Christians have accused Jews of conducting sanguinary rituals.These have included charges of sacrificing Christian children and collecting theirblood for ritual purposes, as well as the commonly associated accusation ofdesecrating the body of Christ in the form of the host sanctified in the mass.Not surprisingly the recent flowering of scholarly interest in the history of anti-Semitism and Christian-Jewish relations has yielded numerous studies of thesecharges in both medieval and modern times.1

Within the last decade alone, two strikingly original contributions have exam-

ined the earliest examples of the ritual-murder accusation. In 1984 Gavin I. Lang-muir published a critical investigation of Thomas of Monmouth's life of St.'Wil-liam of Norwich, which documents the first clear example of a ritual murdercharge.2 Most earlier scholars had studied Thomas's narrative to determine what

Many people deserve thanks for their contributions to this work, although only one bears anyresponsibility for errors. I presented an abbreviated version of this paper to the Medieval Society ofthe University of Kansas in October 1995, and my colleagues in history at Kansas State Universityread and critiqued a nearly final draft. Both groups pushed me to refine my ideas. Christoph Cluseand George R. Keiser also read the paper and offered valuable comments as did several anonymousreviewers. I am especially indebted to Willis Johnson, who is preparing a critical edition of Thomas

of Monmouth's Life of St. William. He freely shared the results of his investigations, and his assistancewith the modern literature in Hebrew on this topic has been indispensable.

1 Classic studies of this phenomenon include Hermann L. Strack, The Jew and Human Sacrifice,trans. Henry Blanchamp (New York, 1909); Cecil Roth, The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew: TheReport by Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV) (London, 1934); Will-Erich Peukert,"Ritualmord," in Hanns Bachtold-Staubli, ed., Handworterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 7:727-39; Joshua Trachenberg, The Devil and the Jews (New York, 1966). Two recent collections of essaysattest to continuing interest in the topic: Alan Dundes, ed., The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook inAnti-Semitic Folklore (Madison, Wis., 1991); and Rainer Erb, ed., Die Legende vom Ritualmord: ZurGeschichte der Blutbeschuldigung gegen Juden, Dokumente, Texte, Materialen 6 (Berlin, 1993). Eachcollection includes an essay by the editor that reviews scholarship: Dundes, "The Ritual Murder orBlood Libel Legend: A Study of Anti-Semitic Victimization through Projective Inversion," pp. 336-76

(repr. from Temenos 25 [1989], 7-32); and Erb, "Zur Erforschung der europaischen Ritualmordbe-schuldigungen," pp. 9-16. Twentieth-century examples of ritual murder accusations, cited by Dundes,p. 345, include one in Kiev in 1911, which provided the basis for Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer,and one in Massena, N.Y, in 1928.

2 "Thomas of Monmouth: Dectector of Ritual Murder," Speculum 59 (1984), 820-46.

698 Speculum 72 (1997)



"really happened" at Norwich in 1144, but Langmuir directs attention to a his-torical issue of much greater significance: Who first accused the Jews of killingyoung William in a bloody rite? He concludes that Thomas of Monmouth per-

sonallyinvented the

malignant mythof ritual murder and introduced it to the

world with the publication of his life of St. William around 11.50. In later worksLangmuir presents this as a turning point in Christian attitudes toward Jews. Heargues that the creation of the ritual murder fantasy marks a transition from "anti-Judaism" to "anti-Semitism," from hostility to Jews founded upon actual char-acteristics of the people and their religion to attacks based upon irrational andcompletely unfounded beliefs about Jews and Judaism. He finds the cause of thischange in rising doubts among Christians about the truth of their own religion,doubts that led them to project antireligious behavior onto the Jews, and he iden-tifies Thomas of Monmouth as the inventor of the first of these fantasies.3

Theories of this scope invite response, and other scholars have already raised

questions or proposed adjustments in Langmuir's broad scheme.4 Nevertheless,his assessment of the events in Norwich has been very well received, and for nearlya decade it provided the basis for something approaching a scholarly consensuson when and where the ritual murder accusation entered the Western tradition.In 1993, however, Israel J. Yuval provoked bitter controversy with an article thatchallenged nearly every element of the prevailing view.5 Yuval contends that theritual murder myth arose in the aftermath of the Christian attacks on Jewishcommunities in the Rhineland in 1096. Faced with forced conversion or death atthe hands of forces assembled for the First Crusade, many Jews chose to avoidsurrender, killing their children and wives and then committing suicide. Yuval

argues that this response arose out of a belief among Ashkenazic Jews that theirmartyrdom would hasten the coming of messianic judgment, when the Jews wouldtriumph over their enemies. But the Christians who witnessed or heard of theseacts perceived a more immediate threat. If Jews were willing to sacrifice their ownoffspring, would they not do the same with Christian children?

Yuval's conviction that the ritual murder accusation originated on the Continentin the psychological atmosphere engendered by the First Crusade also leads himto deny that Thomas of Monmouth provides the earliest witness to the charge.

3 Langmuir's exposition of the larger context of Thomas's work appears in two recent books. Towarda Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, Calif., 1990) is a collection of the author's essays. Most of

them, including "Thomas of Monmouth," pp. 209-36 (notes, pp. 384-87), have appeared earlier, butseveral are new. One of these is "Doubt in Christendom," pp. 100-133 (notes, pp. 365-68). History,Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley, Calif., 1990) offers a theoretical analysis of the problems in-volved in defining and discussing the topics of the title. Particularly relevant here is chap. 14, "FromAnti-Judaism to Antisemitism," pp. 275-305, esp. pp. 298-99.

4 See Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London, 1995),on the extent to which Christian fantasies about Jews were irrational in origin. David Nirenberg,Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J., 1996), adoptsa different perspective on the role of violence in Christian-Jewish relations.

5 "Vengeance and Damnation, Blood and Defamation: From Jewish Martyrdom to Blood LibelAccusations" (in Hebrew), Zion 58 (1993), 33-90; English summary, pp. vi-viii. The following volumeof Zion, a double number, 59:2-3 (1994), presents seven articles, all in Hebrew, disputing or sup-porting various aspects of Yuval's thesis (pp. 129-350; English summaries, pp. x-xvii) along with

Yuval's rejoinders (pp. 351-414; English summary, pp. xvii-xx).

Jewish Ritual Murder 699



Jewish Ritual Murder

Accepting Langmuir's conclusion that Thomas could not have conceived of theritual murder accusation before 1148 or 1149, Yuval argues that the charge firstappeared in Germany at the time of the Second Crusade. Early in 1147, as forcesgathered at Wiirzburg for the march to the East, some of their number proclaimedas a martyr a man they alleged had been killed by the Jews. Since this incidentoccurred before Thomas penned his life of St. William, Yuval sees it as evidencethat Thomas employed a conception of ritual murder imported from continentalEurope.

The eleventh and twelfth centuries marked a period of broad and profoundchange in medieval Latin Christendom. Economy, society, politics, thought, reli-gion-nearly every aspect of western European culture was transformed.6 This

same age witnessed far-reaching developments in the relations between Christiansand Jews. Christian hostility toward the religious minority increased. Economicopportunities for Jews became more restricted; their legal status declined; and theycame to be regarded as enemies of Christ and the Christian religion.7 The ap-pearance of the ritual murder accusation represents an important stage in theincreasingly negative attitudes of the majority toward the minority. This mythhelped to justify Christian hostility by assuring the Christians that Jewish enmitytoward Christ had not been satisfied with his execution; it continued, directed athis followers.

The first example of this particular escalation of Christian antagonism towardJews is the case of St. William of Norwich. But the significance of this episode isnow in dispute. Langmuir sees mid-twelfth-century Norwich as the font of thisfantasy, and he identifies Thomas of Monmouth as its creator. Yuval explains theritual murder myth as an outgrowth of events that occurred a half century beforeWilliam's murder, and he sees Thomas as having elaborated the local incident onthe basis of ideas derived from the Continent. These contrasting interpretationsprovide both context and incentive for a reexamination of the sources that attestto awareness of William of Norwich as a reputed victim of ritual murder. First, Ishall review the evidence for the date of Thomas of Monmouth's life of William,evidence that shows that Thomas composed this hagiography later than is gen-erally assumed. Next, I shall examine other English sources that reveal knowledge

of William's death. These works are for the most part already well known, buttheir contents suggest that their references to the murder do not derive fromThomas's life. Then I shall consider Continental evidence, some of which hasescaped the attention of earlier investigators. These sources confirm the existence

6 Out of the vast literature on these developments, two synthetic works can serve as examples: R. W.Southern's classic exposition, The Making of the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970; first published,1953), and Robert Bartlett's chronologically broader analysis, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Col-onization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Princeton, N.J., 1993).

7 Several recent studies place these developments in larger contexts. R. I. Moore, The Formation ofa Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (Oxford, 1987), sees the

treatment of Jews as part of a growing intolerance of marginal groups. Kenneth R. Stow, AlienatedMinority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), places this period within theMiddle Ages as a whole, examining the world of the Jews as well as their relations with the Christians.Jeremy Cohen, "The Jews as the Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition, from Augustine to the Friars,"Traditio 39 (1983), 1-27, outlines the evolution of a key component in the view of Jews as enemies.

700




of information about William that cannot be traced to Thomas's work. They alsodemonstrate the likelihood that word of William's supposed martyrdom hadspread to southern Germany before Thomas wrote his hagiography and probably

even before the incident at Wiirzburg. Finally, I shall reexamine the evidence forthe first accusations of ritual murder in Norwich.

1. WILLIAM OF NORWICH AND THOMAS OF MONMOUTH

The case generally regarded as the first in the centuries-long series of ritualmurder charges occurred in England, in the city of Norwich, where the mutilatedbody of twelve-year-old William was discovered in Thorpe Wood on the day be-fore Easter in 1144.8 No witnesses came forward to offer evidence about the crime.However, at a diocesan synod held within weeks of the discovery, the boy's uncle,Godwin Sturt, a priest, publicly accused the Jews of murdering his nephew. Shortlythereafter, the child's body, which had been temporarily buried in the wood, wastransferred to the monks' cemetery next to the cathedral, and miracles were re-ported at the tomb.

Information about these events and the developing cult of St. William in thedecade following his death is far more extensive than for most putative victims ofritual murder because William of Norwich found a hagiographer in the person ofThomas of Monmouth. Although Thomas was almost certainly not living in Nor-wich at the time of William's murder and the events that immediately followed,he did enter the cathedral priory sometime before 1150.9 As a monk of Norwich,he became interested in William's case, and during Lent of 1150 he experienceda series of

visionaryvisitations in which he was

orderedto tell

BishopWilliam

Turbe to translate the young martyr's body into the chapter house. ThereafterThomas came to be regarded as William's "sacrist," responsible for the upkeep ofthe tomb and other relics and for collecting stories of the saint's supernaturalpowers. When the time came to produce a written account of William's life andmiracles, Thomas undertook the task, using stories provided by observers of theevents surrounding William's death and information he had obtained directly since

8 The starting point for any study of this case is The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich byThomas of Monmouth, Now First Edited from the Unique Manuscript, with an Introduction, Trans-lation and Notes by Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge, Eng., 1896), hereafter

cited as Life. The only book-length investigation of the incident, M. D. Anderson, A Saint at Stake:The Strange Death of William of Norwich, 1144 (London, 1964), addresses a popular audience. Themost influential recent study is Langmuir, "Thomas of Monmouth." The same author reviews bothmedieval and modern scholarship in "Historiographic Crucifixion," in Gilbert Dahan, ed., Les juifs enregard de l'histoire: Melanges en honneur de Bernhard Blumenkranz (Paris, 1985), pp. 109-27. Newerpublications on the topic include a brief review by Zefira Entin Rokeah, "The State, the Church, andthe Jews in Medieval England," in Shmuel Almog, ed., Antisemitism through the Ages, trans. NathanH. Reisner (Oxford, 1988), pp. 104-6, and a substantial contribution by Friedrich Lotter, "Innocensvirgo et martyr: Thomas von Monmouth und die Verbreitung der Ritualmordlegende im Hochmittel-alter," in Erb, Die Legende vom Ritualmord (see above, n. 1), pp. 25-72. Two recent studies examineWilliam's cult with emphasis on his miracles: Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: PopularBeliefs in Medieval England (Totowa, N.J., 1977); and Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the MedievalMind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000-1215 (Philadelphia, 1982), esp. pp. 68-76.

9 Life, p. x.

701




his arrival in Norwich. Heactively investigated

certainaspects

of the case, and inhis retrospective account he describes the results of his personal visit to the sceneof the crime and cites evidence from witnesses who apparently had not spoken upin 1144.

The fruit of Thomas's efforts was The Life and Passion of St. William the Martyrof Norwich.10 Thomas divided his work into seven books, the last five of whichhe devoted entirely to accounts of the multiple translations of William's body andstories of the miracles that occurred at his tombs and elsewhere. In the first twolibri, however, Thomas presents a detailed account of William's murder along withextensive evidence in support of his claims that the Jews were guilty of the child'sdeath and that the homicide qualified as a martyrdom and thus justified recog-

nizing William as a saint.The first book consists almost entirely of a narrative of the boy's life, his death,and the events of the month that followed. According to Thomas, William was ayouth from a village outside Norwich who was apprenticed to a skinner in thecity. In that position he attracted the attention of local Jews who brought him furgarments for repair and eventually selected him as the victim for a sacrifice thatthey would perform at the time of Passover.

On the Monday after Palm Sunday, a man claiming to be the cook of the arch-deacon of Norwich approached William, asking the boy to come to work for him.William's father being dead, the child insisted on obtaining his mother's permis-sion, and the two sought her out at her home. The mother, Elviva, suspected thatsomething was amiss-or so she claimed after the murder-and argued that herson should not go with the man or that, at the very least, they should wait untilafter Easter. Finally, however, the stranger won her over with a cash payment andreturned with William to Norwich on Tuesday. As they passed through the city,they also stopped at the home of William's aunt, his mother's sister Leviva, wifeof Godwin Sturt, where the "cook" announced that Elviva had entrusted her childto him. Leviva, also suspicious of the arrangement, sent her young daughter tofollow the pair, and the girl saw them enter the house of Eleazar, the leadingmember of Norwich's Jewish community. Inside the house William was welltreated until the following morning, the day of the Passover, when the Jews seized

him and gaggedhim

with a teasel. They tieda

knotted cord aroundhis

head andneck, and shaving his head, they stabbed it with thorns. Then they fastened himto a post and beam as if to a cross "in mockery of the Lord's passion."11 Finally,they dispatched the boy, inflicting a wound in his side that penetrated to his heart,and to stanch the flow of blood they poured boiling water over the corpse. Theday was the Wednesday after Palm Sunday, 22 March 1144.

On Thursday, according to Thomas's day-by-day account, the Jews took coun-sel about how to dispose of the body. They decided to transport it to ThorpeWood on the opposite side of the town in order to divert suspicion from them-selves. At dawn on Good Friday, Eleazar and a companion set out on horsebackwith the body in a sack, and as they entered the wood they encountered /Elward

10 This title appears in the manuscript at the beginning of the general prologue, Life, p. 1.11 Life 1.5, p. 21.

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Ded, a wealthy and respected citizen who was on his way to church accompaniedby a servant. /Elward touched the bag and recognized that it contained a humanbody, whereupon the Jews took off at a gallop. IElward proceeded about his

business without raising the alarm, but he did reveal his experience to a confessorfive years later as he lay on his deathbed, and Thomas of Monmouth heard thestory from the priest.

Thomas states that the Jews hid the corpse in the wood, but the following nightrays of light shone down from heaven to mark the spot where it lay. On Saturdaymorning several people who had seen the celestial sign found their way to thebody. Following the discovery, the corpse lay exposed until the day after Easter,when it was buried on the spot. Then, apparently within days of this interment,the priest Godwin heard of the murder and opened the grave in order to determinewhether the victim was his nephew William. Having identified the corpse, he re-buried it. Shortly thereafter, in the diocesan synod, he accused the Jews of the

murder, and the bishop summoned them to answer the charge. The Jews refusedto submit to the ecclesiastical authority and sought the support and protection ofthe sheriff, the king's representative, who harbored them in the royal castle untilthe crisis had passed. Godwin's charge did not succeed in establishing the guilt ofthe Jews in his nephew's murder, but it did lead, on 24 April, to the translationof young William's body from the temporary grave in Thorpe Wood to a promi-nent tomb in the monks' cemetery located next to the cathedral-the first officialstep in the gradual development of William's cult.

In his second book Thomas switches from narrative to argument. He denouncesdetractors who refuse to recognize William's sainthood and attempts to refute theirobjections. He also contends that William was not only a saint, but a martyr, thatthe Jews were responsible for his death, and that they killed him as a part of aPassover ritual intended to mock the passion of Christ. The evidence for Jewishguilt that Thomas presents here is of several sorts. He adduces the testimony oftwo eyewitnesses, the child who followed William and the traitorous "cook" toEleazar's dwelling and also a Christian maidservant in Eleazar's house. Thiswoman-well after the event-claimed to have glimpsed William fastened to abeam as she passed boiling water to his persecutors through a partly open door.Thomas also refers to several comments by unidentified Jews that appear to beadmissions of guilt, and he cites numerous examples of bribes and attemptedbribes that, he insists, innocent people would never have offered. Most damning,

however, is Thomas's report of the testimony of one Theobald, formerly a Jew ofCambridge, who on hearing of the miracles God worked through William hadconverted to Christianity and become a monk. According to Thomas, Theobaldrevealed that Jews believed they could never return to their ancient homelandunless they yearly sacrificed a Christian "in contempt of Christ."12 To implementthis requirement, their rabbis and leaders met annually at Narbonne to determineby lot the country for that year's sacrifice, and within the country they used asimilar procedure to select a city. In 1144 the lot had fallen on Norwich, and allthe Jewish communities in the kingdom had consented to the act.

12 Life 2.11, pp. 93-94.

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Since the publication of The Life and Miracles of St. William a century ago,Thomas of Monmouth has been accepted as the first author of any detailed ac-count of a case involving the charge of ritual murder. Moreover, within the pastdecade Thomas has come to be seen as a pivotal figure in the history of Christian-Jewish relations. In his seminal article published in 1984, Gavin I. Langmuir la-beled Thomas the "detector of ritual murder," identifying him not merely as therecorder, but indeed as the inventor, of the story that William of Norwich wascrucified by the Jews.13 With his article several times reprinted and supplementedby additional studies, Langmuir's thesis has gained wide acceptance.14

Langmuir's argument is lucidly presented. He begins by excluding the possibilitythat Thomas's tale might have been inspired by stories transmitted by ancient

authors. He establishes with virtual certainty that the relevant texts were unknownto Thomas and, thus, that Thomas's fable is a medieval invention.15 He then con-siders the genesis of the story. Examining the seven books of Thomas's opus, heargues that they represent the result of a multistage process of composition. Inparticular, he suggests that Thomas wrote book 1, the vita per se, in 1149 or early1150. Thomas admits that the memory of William had almost died out amongthe people of Norwich by the late 1140s, and Langmuir sees evidence of a con-certed effort at this time on the part of certain individuals to revive popular interestin St. William. One of these was Wicheman, a monk whom the bishop had dep-utized to hear confessions. He received the account of a recent miracle by whicha pious maiden was freed through William's intercession from the unwelcome

attentions of an incubus. In or about 1149 he also heard the deathbed confession.of /Elward Ded, who finally told the story of his encounter with the Jews on theirway to dispose of William's body. Langmuir places Thomas's first book in thiscontext, arguing that he wrote it as part of the campaign to promote William'scult and to justify the need for a translation from the cemetery to a more protectedand honorable location. This suggestion is not implausible. In his narrative of theremoval of William's body from the cemetery to the chapter house on 12 April1150, Thomas recounts his visions of the preceding Lent in which Bishop HerbertLosinga (1091-1119) and St. William himself demanded a translation, andThomas declares that he personally persuaded Prior Elias, the head of the cathe-dral

chapter,who in turn convinced

BishopWilliam Turbe to undertake the task.16

Adopting 1150, his date for book 1, as the terminus ad quem for the charge

13 Langmuir, Thomas f Monmouth."14 "Thomas f Monmouth" has been reprinted n Dundes, The Blood Libel Legend see above, n.

1), pp. 3-40, as well as in Langmuir's wn Toward a Definition of Antisemitism. or this and hisother recent work, see above, n. 3. Langmuir's onclusions n "Thomas f Monmouth" hold an im-portant place in the arguments f Yuval, "Vengeance nd Damnation" see above, n. 5), pp. 79-80,and Lotter, "Innocens irgo et martyr" see above, n. 8), pp. 25-72, esp. pp. 38, 48, and 72. Forfurther xamples of Langmuir's nfluence, ee Moore, Persecuting ociety see above, n. 7), pp. 119-21; Stow, Alienated Minority seeabove, n. 7), p. 237; and Adriaan H. Bredero, Anti-Jewish entimentin Medieval

Society,"n idem, Christendom nd Christianity n the Middle Ages, trans. Reinder

Bruinsma Grand Rapids, Mich., 1994), p. 294.15Langmuir, Thomas f Monmouth," p. 822-27; see also Langmuir, Historiographic rucifix-

ion" (see above, n. 8), p. 110.16 Life 2.1, pp. 116-21.

704




that William died by crucifixion, Langmuir then reviews all the statements thatThomas attributes to various actors in the narrative. He does not contend thatThomas reports the ipsissima verba of the speeches "quoted" in the life, but hedoes

arguethat,

writingat a time when

manyof the

principalswere still alive,

Thomas would not have risked attributing the completely unprecedented accu-sation of crucifixion to someone who had not actually made it.17 And, in fact,Thomas does not cite any explicit reference to crucifixion by any of the charactersin his drama. Even the convert Theobald-who declared that his former coreli-gionists practiced annual human sacrifice as an insult to Christianity-did notsuggest that they crucified their victims. Rather, the first reference to the mannerof William's death appears in Thomas's narrative of the event, into which he insertsa description of what appears to be a personal visit to the scene of the crime.18 Hespeaks of finding marks in the house which indicated that the child was affixed,not to a freestanding cross, but to a cruciform structure of posts and a beam.

Thomas attributes this explanation of the supposed evidence to common report(ut fama traditur), but Langmuir argues that in fact Thomas, already convincedthat William had been crucified, interpreted what he found in the house in thelight of that conviction.19

Langmuir does concede that anyone could have fabricated the crucifixionstory.20 Once the Jews were accused in the murder of an innocent child found deadduring Easter week, associations between the child and Christ might easily springto the mind of any Christian, but Langmuir believes that Thomas-who empha-sizes other parallels between William and Christ-would be more likely thananyone else to make the connection. He summarizes: "So far as we are ever likelyto, know, Thomas created the accusation. Since he had not acquired all the ele-

ments of his story until 1149, and had apparently written book 1 by 1150, wemay feel reasonably sure that the fantasy that Jews ritually murdered Christiansby crucifixion was created and contributed to western culture by Thomas of Mon-mouth about 1150."21 Then, once recorded, Thomas's fantasy spread widely andrapidly, first within England and then to France and beyond. Its circulation wasmarked by two sorts of traces: widely distributed information about William him-self and, far more threatening, a growing number of murdered children identifiedas victims of ritual crimes.

But is it indeed reasonable to brand Thomas of Monmouth as the inventor ofthe crucifixion libel? To answer this fundamental question, we must consider anumber of different issues: When did Thomas write? What evidence exists thatpeople outside of Norwich possessed any knowledge of William and the mannerof his death? And did that information come from Thomas's text, either directlyor indirectly?

17 Langmuir, Thomas f Monmouth," p. 840-42.18 Life 1.5, pp. 21-22.19Langmuir, Thomas f Monmouth," . 841.20 Langmuir, Thomas f Monmouth," p. 836, 842.21

Langmuir, Thomas f Monmouth," . 842.

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2. THE DATE OF THOMAS'S COMPOSITION

A reexamination of the evidence must begin with the date of Thomas of Mon-mouth's Life of St. William. The original editors apparently assumed that Thomascomposed the work in its extant form, with seven books and a general prologue,as a single piece. The author obligingly dates the final miracle of his last book toJanuary 1172, and he addresses his general prologue to Bishop William Turbe,who died on 16 January 1174. On that basis M. R. James placed the writing ofthe work within a period of approximately two years.22 For the purpose of estab-lishing the time within which Thomas put his hagiography into final form, thisargument is probably conclusive, but it fails to take into account other internalevidence that reveals a more extended process of composition.

Besides Jessopp and James, only Langmuir has examined in detail the questionof dating, and he argues that Thomas composed the work in three stages.23 Hecontends that book 1, the narrative life of St. William, represents an independentcomposition that Thomas wrote in 1149 or early 1150, and he sees the next fivebooks as the product of a later effort, dating to 1154-55. The second book con-tains frequent references to people who doubted William's sanctity, and Langmuirconstrues these as an indication that Thomas felt he had to respond to criticismleveled against the previously published life before narrating the translations andmiracles of the early 1150s in books 3-6. By contrast, book 7 and the general

prologue belong, according to Langmuir's timetable, to a still later stage in whichThomas rounded out and concluded his work between 1172 and 1174.A complete analysis of the chronology of Thomas's composition would exceed

the limits of this study, but the date of book 1 and its relationship to book 2demand consideration because they play a crucial role in any attempt to assessthe early dissemination of information about William of Norwich. Langmuir'sview that books 2-6 were composed as a group is certainly correct, as is his datingof that process to the years 1154-55. The second book contains several referencesto the time of King Stephen couched in terms that Thomas would only have em-ployed after the king's death on 25 October 1154.24 Then, in his prologue to book7, the author reveals that he had completed book 6 before the end of 1155.25 In

this introduction to his final book, Thomas notes that, while he was writing hisearlier codicelli, St. William ceased for a time to perform miracles. During this lullThomas concluded his account of the miracles he knew of, believing that his taskwas finished. Then, when the wondrous events resumed, he had to add one morebook to his collection. This renewal of William's thaumaturgic powers occurredsometime in the year 1155. Since book 2 could not have been written before lateOctober 1154 and book 6 was finished before the end of 1155, the chronologicallimits for five of Thomas's seven libri are quite narrow.

22 Life, p. liii.23

Langmuir, "Thomas of Monmouth," pp. 838-40.24 Life 2.10, p. 91, "Ea tempestate qua Regis Stephani florebat regnum, immo iusticia languentedegenerabat .. ."; 2.11, p. 95, "Regnante etenim Rege Stephano ... iudei ... nobis audacter insultaresolebant."

25 Life 7, prol., pp. 262-63.

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Thomas surely composed book 1 as a part of this process and not earlier. Al-though the first book lacks the clear temporal references that place book 2 afterthe death of King Stephen, ample evidence associates it with libri 2-6. One clearindication that Thomas did not

composea

separatelife of St. William to

encouragea translation is his silence in the first codicellus about William's earliest miracles.For all his enthusiasm for his hero's sanctity, Thomas was able to present only fivemiracle stories from the years between 1144 and 1150: a rose on William's gravethat blossomed out of season; two visions of the young martyr in glory; a woman'srelief from a painful and extended labor; and a virgin delivered from an incubus.The number is not large, but if Thomas had composed book 1 in 1149 or early1150 to justify increased veneration for William and to promote a translationfrom the cemetery to the chapter house, he would certainly have incorporatedsuch clear evidence of divine favor into that work. But instead, he ended book 1with William's first translation and burial in the cemetery, and he reserved the

miracles that occurred between the first translation and the second for book 2.26Moreover, clear textual ties between the first book and those that follow indicate

that libri 1-6 formed a single unit of Thomas's composition. One link betweenthe first and second books appears in the arguments adduced in both places toestablish the guilt of the Jews. In book 1 Thomas describes Godwin Sturt's ap-pearance before the diocesan synod at which he charged the Jews with murder. Insupport of his accusation, he presented three points: the rituals the Jews wereknown to conduct in the season when William died; the forms of torture inflictedon the victim and the resulting wounds; and additional circumstantial evidence.27Then in the eighth chapter of book 2, Thomas presents a similar passage, but inthis case he speaks for himself. Addressing those who had expressed doubt aboutthe Jews' responsibility for William's death, Thomas reiterates the same threepoints,28 and these theses summarize much of the argument of the second book.If the first book had already appeared and met with severe criticism, it appearssurprising that Thomas-after five years' time for reflection-should choose torely so heavily on these same points. Rather, the parallels between the ideas pre-sented in these two passages suggest that the first and second books are the productof a single, continuous process of composition.

The eighth chapter of book 2 also contains another, more explicit expressionof its connection with book 1. Here Thomas addresses those who know thatWilliam was cruelly murdered but still doubt that his death was a martyrdom. Hementions three

possibleavenues

bywhich

they mighthave come to their knowl-

edge of the boy's death: they have seen with their own eyes that he was murdered,or they hear of it from others, or they read of it in the present work (uel oculisuiderunt, uel ab aliis audiunt, uel scriptis presentibus legunt).29 The narrative ofWilliam's death appears in book 1, but in book 2 the author refers in the presenttense to those who are reading that account here and now.

26 Life 2.3-7, pp. 66-85. Lotter, "Innocens irgo et martyr" see above, n. 8), p. 30, suggests hatthese miracles ould have formed part of an original one-book vita.

27Life 1.16, p. 44.28 Life 2.8, p. 88.

29 Life 2.8, p. 85.





Finally,several references in the first book indicate that Thomas

composedthat

unit with knowledge of events that occurred after William's tomb was opened andhis body translated to the chapter house. In telling the story of the original burialin Thorpe Wood, Thomas says that this interment was divinely ordained so thatthe saint might be moved to a more honorable tomb in the cemetery. He adds thatGod also revealed William's virtues by working miracles at the site of his firstresting place.30 After this general statement in book 1, Thomas's next reference tomiracles at that location appears in book 4, where he tells how Botilda, the wifeof the monks' cook, followed instructions that William gave her in a vision andfound a healing spring there.31 Like most of Thomas's miracle narratives, the storyof Botilda's discovery lacks a precise date. Nevertheless, the author adheres closely

to the chronological order of events, and he begins each of the original libri mira-culorum with a milestone in the history of St. William's cult. Book 3 opens withevents surrounding the translation of William's body from the cemetery into thechapter house, which Thomas places on 2 April 1150,32 and book 4 starts withthe death of Prior Elias on 22 October of an unspecified year.33 Elias could nothave perished before 1150, however, for Thomas interprets his demise as divinepunishment for his reluctance to approve the placement of special marks ofhonor-a carpet and candles-at William's tomb in the chapter house, and Bo-tilda did not find the spring until after the prior's death.34

A second chronological incongruity in book 1 occurs in one of the passagesLangmuir interprets as evidence for Thomas's personal sleuthing into the mannerof William's death.35 In the midst of his account of the child's passion, Thomasinterrupts his narrative to describe a later investigation of the crime scene and aninspection of the victim's wounds: "And we, after enquiring into the matter verydiligently, did both find the house, and discovered (deprehendimus) some mostcertain marks in it of what had been done there. For report goes that there wasthere instead of a cross a post set up between two other posts, and a beam stretchedacross the midmost post and attached to the other on either side. And as weafterwards discovered (deprehendimus), from the marks of the wounds and of thebands, the right hand and foot had been tightly bound and fastened with cords,but the left hand and foot were pierced with two nails: so in fact the deed wasdone

by design that,in

case at any time he should be found, when the fasteningsof the nails were discovered it might not be supposed that he had been killed byJews rather than by Christians."36 Thomas describes here two discoveries, and inboth cases his use of a first-person verb at least implies that he personally tookpart in the observations he recounts. He offers no clue as to when the house wasexplored, but presumably he could have visited it anytime after his arrival in

30Life 1.12, p. 37.

31 Life 4.10, pp. 179-80. Thomas recounts other miracles at the same place in 7.13, pp. 272-73,and 7.18, pp. 279-89.

32 Life 3.1, pp. 116-25.33

Life 4.1, pp. 165-66.34 Indeed, the discovery of the spring, described in Life 4.10, probably occurred after Christmas of1150, for Thomas refers to the coming of that season in 4.8, p. 173.

35 Langmuir, "Thomas of Monmouth," p. 841.36 Life 1.5, pp. 21-22.

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Norwich in the later 1140s. The possibilities for inspecting the traces of woundsand bonds were much more limited. William's body lay entombed in the monks'cemetery from April 1144 until April 1150, when the sarcophagus was openedfor the second translation.

Thus,if Thomas's

first-personverb

literallymeans that

he personally saw marks on William's corpse, then he could not have penned thispassage before the translation of spring 1150.37

These references in book 1 to events that occurred during or after the translationof April 1150 accord with the other evidence that Thomas included in his originalunit of composition not only the narrative of William's life in book 1 but also thelater events of books 2-6. As a result, his work could not have contributed to thedistribution of information about St. William until sometime in 1155, at the ear-liest.

On the other hand, Thomas himself provides evidence for the early spread ofknowledge of St. William when he identifies the origins of petitioners who came

to the boy's tomb seeking miracles. He refers frequently to the crowds who camefrom far and wide to obtain the aid of the holy child,38 and these people couldnot have learned of William from Thomas's account. Nevertheless, specific in-stances of visitors from distant locations are rare,39 and most of the beneficiariesof William's thaumaturgy did not travel far.40 Thomas's most telling evidence forknowledge of William outside of East Anglia appears in his account of the cureof a girl in Worcestershire, who had a vision of William as a beautiful but bloodyyouth bearing a cross. The value of this story is enhanced because, instead oftelling it in his own words, Thomas quotes a letter composed by a monk of Per-shore. But the context suggests that he received this communication around 1170,well after completing the main body of his text.41

3. ENGLISH EVIDENCE FOR THE DISSEMINATION

OF KNOWLEDGE OF WILLIAM'S DEATH

The textual tradition of Thomas's opus suggests that even after it appeared, itdid little to enhance the fame of its hero. The Life and Passion of St. William

37 Conversely, if the "we" here refers not to Thomas personally but to an unspecified group such as

the brothers who prepared the body, then one must also question whether Thomas personally inspectedthe house where William was said to have died.38 Examples of such statements appear at Life 3.17, p. 150; 3.31, pp. 161-62; 4.1, p. 165; 4.11, p.

181; 6.1, p. 220; 6.9, p. 231.39 Among the miracles that can reasonably be dated to 1155 or before, the more distant recipients

came from Canterbury (Life 3.29, p. 160), the province of York (5.8, pp. 195-96), and the region ofHastings (7.1, p. 263). The petitioner who came the greatest distance was Philip of Bella Arbore, aLorrainer, but he did not make a special trip to visit St. William. He had made a penitential pilgrimageto Rome and to shrines from Jerusalem to Ireland before arriving in Norwich, 6.9, pp. 232, 234-35.

40 Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims (see above, n. 8), pp. 161-62.41 The letter appears in Life 7.19, pp. 283-89. On the date, see James, Life, p. lxxvi, who also notes

an East Anglian connection. He indicates that William, abbot of Pershore, was a former monk of Eyein Suffolk, but William was dead by 1143: David Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, and Vera C. M. London,

Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, 940-1216 (Cambridge, Eng., 1972), p. 59.

709




survives in a single manuscript dating from the last quarter of the twelfth century.42The copy is not an autograph or author's original, but it may well have beencopied within a decade of the completion of the original. The provenance of themanuscript is unknown. However, it is most likely East Anglian, and what littleis known of its history suggests that it may never have left that region. Around1700 it was willed to the Suffolk parish of Brent Eleigh by Edward Colman,formerly of Trinity College, Cambridge,43 and the Cambridge University Librarypurchased the codex from the parish in 1891.44

Evidence for the possible existence of any other manuscripts is also very limited.One copy of the text was certainly available in the fourteenth century to John ofTynemouth, who included a much-abbreviated version of Thomas's life in his ownSanctilogium Angliae, but John traveled widely to assemble the materials for hisambitious historical and hagiographical collections. Thus his use of William's vitadoes not imply that any manuscript had migrated far from Norwich. John's Sanc-tilogium was rearranged in the fifteenth century from calendarial to alphabeticalorder and became associated with the name of John Capgrave; it was printed inthe early sixteenth century by Wynkyn de Worde under the title Nova legendaAnglie.4s This made the central features of Thomas's story available to a muchbroader audience, but until the publication of the complete text by Jessopp andJames in 1896, "Capgrave's" ife of St. William remained the only widely knownsource of information about the circumstances surrounding William's death.46

A few other scholars were aware of Thomas'scomposition,

but the earliestreference is in the work of the sixteenth-century antiquary John Leland (1506?-1552). Likewise, John Bale (1495-1563) showed independent knowledge of thetext. Yet these notices offer no evidence of notable dissemination, for Leland in-dicates that he used a manuscript in the Norwich cathedral priory, and Bale was

42 Cambridge, University Library, Additional MS 3037. M. R. James describes the codex, Life, pp.li-liii, and dates the section containing the life of William to the late twelfth century. Willis Johnson,who has generously shared the unpublished results of his investigations, favors a date in the 1170s or1180s and argues for an East Anglian origin.

43 This is most likely the Edward Colman who matriculated at Cambridge in 1651: John Venn and

J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Hold-ers of Office at the University of Cambridge from the Earliest Times to 1900, 1/1 (Cambridge, Eng.,1922), p. 369.

44 Willis Johnson informs me that the records of the University Library indicate this manuscript waspurchased in 1891 rather than 1889 as noted by M. R. James, Life, p. 1.

45 Carl Horstmann, ed., Nova legenda Anglie: As Collected by John of Tynemouth, John Capgrave,and Others, and First Printed by Wynkyn de Worde a.d. m d xui, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1901). Horstmanndemonstrated that this collection, traditionally attributed to Capgrave, is essentially a reworking ofJohn of Tynemouth's Sanctilogium, which is preserved in London, British Library, MS Cotton TiberiusEl (l:xi), and he examined the evidence for John of Tynemouth's career (1:xxxiii-lxvii). Horstmannconceded credit to Capgrave for rearranging the collection, but Peter J. Lucas, "John Capgrave andthe Nova legenda Anglie: A Survey," The Library, 5th ser., 25 (1970), 1-10, considers even thatassessment too generous.

46 It was reprinted in the Bollandists' Acta sanctorum, Mar. 3:590-91; 3rd ed., pp. 587-88. AnEnglish version appeared in the same year that de Worde published the Nova legenda. It is nowavailable in a critical edition: The Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande, Ed. from Pynson'sPrinted Edition, 1516 by Manfred G6rlach, Middle English Texts 27 (Heidelberg, 1994), pp. 174-75.

710




a native East Anglian. Even in its area of origin, however, the text enjoyed quitelimited circulation, for Francis Blomefield, the famed Norfolk antiquary of theeighteenth century, knew Thomas's work only at several removes.47

English martyrologies likewise provide no clear evidence for broader knowledgeof Thomas's composition.48 The earliest text with a reference to William appearsto be the sixteenth-century Martiloge in Englysshe.49 The author of this compi-lation, Richard Whytford, clearly based his entry on John of Tynemouth's abbre-viation rather than on Thomas of Monmouth's original, for he inserted his noticefor William on 15 April, a date otherwise attested only in the Sanctilogium andthe Nova legenda Anglie.

Another potential source of hagiographical evidence for the transmission ofThomas's text would be stories of other cases involving the charge of ritual murder,but here again the results are disappointing. Information survives regarding thedeaths of four other youths in twelfth-century England. Three of them-Harold

at Gloucester in 1168, Robert at Bury St. Edmunds in 1181, and an anonymousboy at Winchester in 1192-are known only on the basis of chronicle accounts,but at least some of the authors must have heard of St. William.50 The letter fromthe monk of Pershore attests to knowledge of William's cult near Gloucester byabout the time of Harold's death in that city,51 and the monks of Bury could hardlyhave been ignorant of Norwich claims for William's sanctity. The most detailedof these accounts is that pertaining to the child killed at Winchester. Richard ofDevizes narrates the events in a caustic fashion, directing his criticism primarilyat the citizens of Winchester,52 and his tale reveals some notable similarities to

47 Jamessurveys

the evidence fromearly-modern

scholars(Life, pp. lviii-lx), but he focuses almostexclusively on Leland and Bale, who actually saw Thomas's text. Blomefield's discussion of William's

case, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 3 (London, 1806), pp.26-28 (originally published 1741), is based on chronicles-especially the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle andBartholomew Cotton-the Nova legenda, and John Pits's De illustribus Angliae scriptoribus (1619).Pits drew his information from Bale, and Blomefield displays no independent knowledge of Thomas'swork. Similarly derivative is the reference to Thomas's history in Alban Butler's great hagiographicalreference work, first published anonymously under the title The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, andOther Principal Saints (London, 1756-59), where William appears on 24 March. All of Butler's in-formation about William comes from Blomefield.

48 Richard Stanton, A Menology of England and Wales (London, 1892), supplemented his articleson saints with lists of calendars and martyrologies in which they appeared. These lists were based oninformation compiled by the renowned student of English liturgy, Edmund Bishop. Nevertheless, the

references in the article on St. William (p. 134) reveal nothing earlier than Whytford's work (seefollowing note). My own examination of published martyrologies has yielded no further examples.

49The Martiloge in Englysshe after the use of the chirche of Salisbury and as it is redde in Syon withaddicyons. Printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1526, ed. F Procter and E. S. Dewick, Henry Bradshaw

Society 3 (London, 1893), pp. 57-58.50 On these English cases generally, see Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 3rd ed.

(Oxford, 1964), p. 13; Langmuir, "Historiographic Crucifixion" (see above, n. 8), pp. 113-14; andRok6ah (see above, n. 8), pp. 106-11. Jocelin of Brakelond mentions Robert in his Chronicle, ed. andtrans. H. E. Butler (New York, 1949), p. 16, stating that he has written more about the case elsewhere,and Bale refers to a life of Robert, Index Britanniae scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole and MaryBateson (Oxford, 1902), p. 276, but it does not survive.

51 See above, n. 41.52 The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. and trans. John

T. Appleby (London, 1963), pp. 64-69. The ambiguity and cynicism of this passage have yielded

711




Thomas's. He attributes the murder to an international "conspiracy" n which thevictim was selected in France and sent to England. He also indicates that the twoprimary witnesses were unable to testify because one was a child and the other awoman employed in the house where the murder occurred, and he declares thatthe charge was finally dismissed as a result of bribery. Yet even these elementswould not require knowledge of Thomas's story. The lack of competent witnessesis virtually universal in ritual murder cases. The Christian housemaid and theconspiracy appear as elements of other stories.53 The imputation of bribery offersa reasonable explanation for why the accused remained unpunished. Thus, whilethese authors may have heard of the death and miracles of St. William, neitherRichard of Devizes nor any of the others show specific knowledge of Thomas of

Monmouth's account of those events.54Besides William of Norwich only one putative victim of ritual murder in twelfth-century England became the subject of an extant hagiographical treatment. Thiswas Adam, who has been thought to have died at Bristol around 1183. The storyof Adam's martyrdom is the work of an anonymous author who may possiblyhave had Thomas's text at hand. Nevertheless, the evidence for the compositionof the work suggests that it dates from the thirteenth century,55 and if its authorknew Thomas's vita, he made little specific use of it.

Turning from hagiographical to more traditional historical sources, the earliestreference to William in an English work appears in the Peterborough version ofthe Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the annal for 1137. This entry, composed in or

shortly after 1155, reviews much of the reign of King Stephen, including the eventsin Norwich:56 "In his [Stephen's] time, the Jews of Norwich bought a Christian

widely varying interpretations of Richard's attitude toward Jews and the degree of his skepticism aboutthe Winchester murder case. For a review and assessment of the literature, see Gerd Mentgen, "Richardof Devizes und die Juden: Ein Beitrag zur Interpretation seiner 'Gesta Richardi,' " Kairos 30-31 (1988-89), 95-104.

53 Lotter, "Innocens virgo et martyr" (see above, n. 8), p. 70, lists the maid among the commonelements of these stories, and he refers, p. 59, to international arrangements in the ritual murderaccusation at Valr6as in 1247.

54 Nancy F Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England(Chicago, 1977), pp. 175-79, reviews Richard's narrative, pointing to some additional, but much less

specific, factual parallels with Thomas's life. On this basis she contends that Richard was satirizingThomas's book, which she believes was "sufficiently well known for quick allusions to register im-mediately." Richard may possibly have read Thomas's work, but its limited distribution assures thatRichard's audience would not have recognized a parody.

55 Michael Adler, Jews of Medieval England (London, 1939), pp. 185-86, called attention to anaccount of this episode, which is presently the object of study by at least two scholars. Christoph Clusehas prepared an edition, "Fabula ineptissima: Die Ritualmordlegende um Adam von Bristol nach derHandschrift London, British Library, Harley 957," Aschkenas 5 (1995), 293-330; on the date, see pp.301-3. Robert C. Stacey presented a paper entitled "From Ritual Crucifixion to Host Desecration:The Excruciating Drama of Adam of Redcliff" at the spring 1995 meeting of the Medieval Academyof America, and he has generously shared with me some of the unpublished results of his research.

56 Dorothy Whitelock, D. C. Douglas, and S. I. Tucker, transs., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a Re-vised Translation (New Brunswick, N.J., 1961), p. 200. Regarding the date of composition, Whitelock

notes, p. xvi, "Finally, in or after 1155, the section dealing with events from 1132 to the early part of1155 was added by another scribe who can only rarely assign them to their proper year." R. H. C.Davis, King Stephen, 3rd ed. (London, 1990), p. 147, states that this portion of the chronicle waswritten "in, or soon after, 1154." Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307(Ithaca, N.Y., 1974), pp. 92, 274, notes only that the chronicle ends in 1154.

712




child before Easter and tortured him with all the torture that our Lord was tor-tured with; and on Good Friday hanged him on a cross on account of our Lord,and then buried him. They expected that it would be concealed, but our Lord

made it plain that he was a holy martyr, and the monks took him and buried himwith ceremony in the monastery, and through our Lord he works wonderful andvaried miracles, and he is called St. William." The date of this annal's compositionmakes it approximately contemporary with Thomas's life, but its confused de-scriptions of political events suggest that the chronicler was writing on the basisof memory rather than contemporary records, and the same may be true of hisaccount of St. William. Surely if he had been able to consult Thomas's hagiogra-phy, he would have more closely approximated the year of the boy's death.

The factual similarities between the chronicle's narrative and Thomas's are strik-ing, but there are also some differences. In the first place, the statement that theJews purchased William differs somewhat from Thomas's indication that their

representative bribed the boy's mother to let him leave, but the distinction is mi-nor.57 More important, the chronicle places William's death on Good Friday, whileThomas very explicitly puts it on the preceding Wednesday. Likewise, the annalstates that the Jews buried William's body. Thomas, however, declares that theyleft it in the wood on Good Friday, hanging from a tree by a flaxen cord, that itwas found the next day, lying "at the root of an oak,"58 and that it remainedunburied until the following Monday. Finally, the chronicler's statement that themonks buried William in the monastery is sufficiently imprecise to cover all ofWilliam's resting places from his grave in the monks' cemetery to his final tombin the church. Clearly, the Peterborough annalist knew some of the fundamentalfacts about William's death and miracles. Nevertheless, the differences betweenhis account and Thomas's-especially on the year and the day of the murder-suggest that he did not obtain his information from Thomas's life.

Much more abbreviated notices of William's death appear in a number of otherEnglish chronicles, but by no means in all.59 Most of the authors who mentionWilliam reproduce, with only minor variations, a standard notice under the year1144: Puer Willelmus crucifixus est a Judaeis apud Norwicum.60 The only signifi-

57 Purchase of the victim is a common element in the stories of ritual murder: Lotter, "Innocens virgoet martyr" (see above, n. 8), p. 70.

58 Life 1.7, 1.10, pp. 28, 33.

59 In looking for references to William's death I have concentrated on two categories of texts: thoseGransden, Historical Writing, pp. 526-27, and Edgar Graves, A Bibliography of English History to1485 (Oxford, 1975), p. 390, identify as dating wholly or in part from the period between the deathsof St. William and King Richard I (1144-99); and those from the East Anglian region. Works thatomit all mention of William include the chronicles of Gervase of Canterbury, Henry of Huntingdon,Hugh Candidus, John of Hexham, Ralph of Diceto, Ralph Niger, Roger of Howden, and William of

Newburgh as well as the annals of Abingdon, Evesham, and Battle Abbey. See also Langmuir, "His-toriographic Crucifixion" (see above, n. 8), p. 115.

60 The basic notice appears in the South English continuation of the annals of Rouen, ed. FelixLiebermann, Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen (Strasbourg, 1879; repr. Ridge-wood, N.J., 1966), p. 48; Annales sancti Edmundi, ibid., p. 133; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon

Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series 66 (London, 1875), p. 12; Waverly Annals, ed. H. R.Luard, Annales monastici, Rolls Series 36 (London, 1865), 1:230; Worcester Annals, ibid., 4:379; and

"John Brompton," Chronicon, ed. Roger Twysden, Historiae Anglicanae scriptores X (London, 1652),

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cant expansion on this core appears in the late-thirteenth-century chronicle ofJohn of Oxnead, a monk at the Norfolk abbey of St. Benet of Hulme, who addeda date for William's death: ix kalendas Martii (21 February).61 Despite the numberof such references, their brevity and verbal similarity suggest that concrete, his-torical information about William's death spread slowly and primarily as a resultof chroniclers' copying from their predecessors, and not through independent useof Thomas of Monmouth's vita.

An examination of the works of Matthew Paris, the most noted English histo-rian of the thirteenth century, strengthens this impression. His two most importantcompositions, the Chronica majora and Historia Anglorum, contain no referenceat all to St. William. This was certainly not because Matthew lacked interest in

the subject. In his Greater Chronicle he presents accounts of attacks on Jews inNorwich, Stamford, Bury St. Edmunds, and York in 1190; the crimes of Jewsin Norwich in 1234 and again in 1239 or 1240; their murder of a boy in Londonin 1244; a case of blasphemy and murder at Berkhampstead in 1150; and, mostfamous of all, the ritual murder of little St. Hugh at Lincoln in 1255.62 ThatMatthew should provide a detailed account of the death of St. Hugh and say nota word about the martyrdom of St. William suggests that he was completely un-informed about the earlier case. The sole reference to William in any of Matthew'sopera appears in one of his later and shorter chronicles, the Flores historiarum.63Even there his notice is only an incomplete version of the most common annalistictext: Eo anno

[i.e., 1144] quidam puera

Judaeis apudNorwicum

crucifixusest.

The text omits the name of the child, and not all of the manuscripts even refer tothe Jews. Only one copy of the work mentions William by name, and it adds theindication that he died on the ninth kalends of March. This manuscript, writtenaround the beginning of the fourteenth century at St. Benet of Hulme, also con-

col. 1043. Two other works reproduce the basic text but omit William's name: Thomas Wykes, Chron-icle, ed. Luard, Annales monastici, 4:25; and the Bermondsey Annals, ibid., 3:437. The late-thirteenth-century Norwich chronicler Bartholomew Cotton, who drew upon earlier annals from the cathedral

priory, provides nothing beyond the standard notice s.a. 1144, even substituting martyrizatus forcrucifixus, but s.a. 1150 he inserts a unique reference to William's translation from the cemetery tothe chapter house: Bartholomaei de Cotton monachi Norwicensis Historia Anglicana, ed. H. R. Luard,Rolls Series 16 (London, 1859), pp. 67, 68. On Cotton's local source, see Luard, pp. xxi-xxv; andGransden, Historical Writing, p. 444. On the chronicle accounts of William's death, see also Langmuir,"Historiographic Crucifixion" (see above, n. 8), pp. 115-16.

61 Ed. Henry Ellis, Rolls Series 13 (London, 1859), p. 48. John also added that the Jews were severelypunished. Nicholas Trivet, Annales sex regum Angliae, ed. Thomas Hog, English Historical Society(London, 1865; repr. Vaduz, 1964), p. 18, rejected the standard reference to William's death. Heelaborated on the blasphemy and cruelty of the Jews, but he omitted the name of their victim.

62 Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series 57 (London, 1872-83), 2:358-59; 3:305-6,543;4:30-31, 377-78; 5:114-15, 516-19, 546, 552. On the events of 1190, see R. B. Dobson, The Jewsof Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, Borthwick Papers 45 (York, 1974), pp. 25-28.

On the incidents in Norwich, see V. D. Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London, 1961), pp.57-64; and Zefira Entin Rokeah, "The Jewish Church-Robbers and Host Desecrators of Norwich (ca.1285)," Revue des etudes juives 141 (1982), 331-62, here pp. 339-46. On the case of St. Hugh, seeGavin I. Langmuir, "The Knight's Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln," Speculum 47 (1972), 459-82.

63 Ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series 95 (London, 1890), 2:65.

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tains a number of other additions to Matthew's text that relate to Norfolk andthe diocese of Norwich.64

One point of disagreement among the various sources is the date of William'sdeath. Thomas states that William was murdered on the

Wednesdayafter Palm

Sunday, 22 March 1144, while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle declares that he suf-fered martyrdom on Good Friday, which fell on 24 March in that year. Of theshorter annalistic accounts, only two even mention a date, and both of these workscome from the Benedictine house of St. Benet of Hulme, not far from Norwich.These two texts place the child's death on the ninth kalends of March, or 21February. Taken at its face value, the February date seems to have no connectionwith William's case, for it does not correspond to any of the dated events inThomas's account. However, in the Roman reckoning the St. Benet date of IX Kl.Martii differs by exactly one month from IX Kl. Aprilis (24 March), the date ofGood Friday in 1144. This discrepancy is not surprising. The Roman system of

dating, in which the days in the second half of each month are numbered inrelation to the first day (kalends) of the next month, was confusing even to me-dieval writers who employed it regularly. As a result, errors of this sort aboundin materials relating to saints.

In liturgical sources William's name appears only rarely,65 but it does occur ina few service books closely associated with Norwich. Notices of William's feastturn up in five calendars from Norwich cathedral. The earliest of these is asso-ciated with a customary of the cathedral church and probably dates from the early1280s;66 another is attributable to the late thirteenth century;67 two more comefrom around 1300;68 and the last-an addition to the famous Ormesby Psalter-

64 British Library, MS Royal 14.C.6; Luard discusses these additions in the introduction to his edi-tion, 1:xxii-xxiv.

65 He is not included in any of the calendars in Francis Wormald, English Benedictine Kalendars

after A.D. 1100, 2 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 77 and 83 (London, 1939,1946), nor was he insertedlater into any of the texts in Wormald's English Kalendars before A.D. 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society72 (London, 1934).

66 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 465, ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst, The Customary of the Cathe-dral Priory Church of Norwich, Henry Bradshaw Society 82 (London, 1948). The calendar appearson pp. 1-12, and Tolhurst discusses its date on pp. vii-viii. M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue ofthe Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Eng., 1911-

12), 2:396-97, and N. R. Ker, "Medieval Manuscripts from Norwich Cathedral Priory," in idem,Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. Andrew G. Watson (London,1985), p. 258, favor dates at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, andneither offers a separate date for the calendar.

67 The calendar accompanies a psalter in Lambeth Palace, MS 368; see M. R. James, A DescriptiveCatalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace: The Medieval Manuscripts (Cam-bridge, Eng., 1932), pp. 498-501. I wish to thank Willis Johnson who brought this calendar to myattention.

68 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MSS 470 and 347. James, Catalogue, 2:405-6, dates thecalendar in codex 470 as "xiv early?"; but Ker, "Medieval Manuscripts," p. 263, favors a span fromthe end of the twelfth through the thirteenth century for the entire manuscript without specifying adate for the calendar. James, Catalogue, 2:181-82, places codex 347 in the early fourteenth century,and Ker, "Medieval Manuscripts," p. 265, assigns the entire manuscript to the fourteenth century

without distinguishing the calendar. On the contents of these calendars, see the following note.

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was probably written in the 1320s.69 In all of these texts, the passion of St. Wil-liam, martyr of Norwich, is entered on 24 March. Somewhat earlier than the firstcalendar is the text of the customary itself. Dating from around 1260, this workcontains instructions for celebrating the feast of St. William the martyr, again on24 March.70

Thomas of Monmouth noted with great precision that William died on theWednesday of Holy Week in 1144, but his contemporary, the Anglo-Saxon chron-icler at Peterborough, placed the boy's death on Good Friday. A century later, themonks of the cathedral priory celebrated the martyrdom on the date correspond-ing to that of Good Friday in 1144. If this were all the evidence available, onemight easily conclude that, although the church of Norwich had known the

Wednesday date in the beginning, the attraction of associating William's deathwith that of his Lord had ultimately proven irresistible, and the feast had movedfrom the twenty-second to the twenty-fourth of March. However, at one point inhis account, Thomas himself-perhaps unwittingly-presents evidence for an al-ternative date for William's murder.

In his tale of William's death and the events immediately surrounding it, Thomasreveals great concern for chronological precision. He states that the Jews' repre-sentative came to fetch the child on the Monday before Easter, that William wasmurdered on Wednesday, and that his body was hidden in the wood on GoodFriday, discovered on Saturday, and buried on the following Monday.71 Similarly,near the end of the first book, where he describes the exhumation of William'scorpse and its translation from the wood to the monks' cemetery, Thomas specifiesthat the transfer took place on 24 April, and he notes that the monks were amazedto find the body fresh and incorrupt thirty-two days after the boy's death.72 Butfollowing the Latin convention of counting the days at both ends of a period andplacing William's murder thirty-two days before 24 April fixes it on 24 March-the date of Good Friday in 1144.73

69 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 366. For a microfiche reproduction of the manuscript withan introduction by W. O. Hassall, see The Ormesby Psalter, Medieval Manuscripts in Microform, 1/3 (Oxford, 1978). The most extensive study of the manuscript appears in S. C. Cockerell and M. R.

James, Two East Anglian Psaltersat the

Bodleian Library, Roxburghe Club (Oxford, 1926). Cockerelledited the Ormesby calendar, noting variants from the three Cambridge texts, and the month of Marchappears, ibid., p. 6. For a recent description and bibliography, see Lucy Freeman Sandler, GothicManuscripts, 1285-1385, 2 vols., A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 5 (Oxford,1986), 2:49-51. The Ormesby Psalter also contains a litany added about the same time as the calendarin which William appears among the martyrs. Also in Two East Anglian Psalters, pp. 41-42, M. R.James presents excerpts from the calendar (c. 1300) of the Bromholm Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library,MS Ashmole 1523. This text from outside Norwich apparently makes no mention of William.

70 Customary (see n. 66), p. 73. The customary does not generally include the dates of the festivalsit describes, but a note in the text indicates that William's feast was on the day before the Annunciation,which was universally celebrated on 25 March. It appears on that date in all of the Norwich calendars(Cockerell) and in all of Wormald's post-1100 calendars.

71 Life 1.4, 5, 10-11, 12.72

Life 1.17, pp. 50, 51-52, "Cum et enim iam xxxta.ii. a die mortis eius pertransissent dies."73 In addition to this reference to a competing death date, Thomas speaks of several other examplesof veneration of William that existed independently of the "official" cult at his tomb. Most of theseinvolved relics: iron bands from his weaning miracle in the parish church at Haverlingland, Life 1.2,pp. 12-13; two teeth, a shoe, and "other relics" that Thomas had in his possession, 3.1, pp. 122-23;

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This review of the English evidence external to Thomas's account suggests avariety of conclusions. On the one hand, the accounts of other boy martyrs raisethe possibility that general knowledge of the Norwich affair may have enjoyed

some dissemination. However, sources that place a premium on more precise in-formation-a death date for liturgical texts or a year for annals-suggest a dif-ferent conclusion. Liturgical commemoration of William was probably restrictedto Norwich cathedral, and annalistic references to his death spread slowly. Mostof the chronicles that mention him present verbally similar accounts, showing thatthey acquired their information by borrowing from one another rather than byindependently exploiting a written or oral tradition. They are, however, nearlyunanimous in placing the murder in 1144, in blaming it on the Jews, and indescribing it as a crucifixion. All of these facts correspond to those Thomas pro-vides, but the accounts are too brief to establish conclusively that they are ulti-mately derived from the vita he composed. Only the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle pro-vides more details. Even here, however, the brevity of the narrative and thedifference in language make it difficult to establish the direct influence of Thomas'swork. Nevertheless, the nearly contemporary composition of these two accountsreduces the likelihood that the Peterborough chronicler borrowed from Thomas.Moreover, a few factual differences between the two narratives increase the prob-ability that they are independent of one another. The vernacular annalist's state-ment that the Jews buried William's body seems insignificant by itself, but it gainsimportance in combination with his pronouncement that the boy died on GoodFriday. Other, later sources from St. Benet of Hulme and Norwich itself supportthe date presented by the Peterborough annalist. Finally, whatever its relationshipto Thomas's vita, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which places William's death in1137, is clearly not the source of the Latin annals, where the event appears under1144.

All of this suggests that information about William's death that was independentof Thomas's hagiography circulated at least within a limited geographical area.This tradition apparently paralleled Thomas's version in asserting that the boydied by crucifixion, but it differed from Thomas on the date. The discordancewithin Thomas's composition between the dates he used in the narrative of themurder itself and in the account of the translation to the cemetery suggests thathe, too, was aware of the Good Friday tradition and rejected it. But in the onecase where he spoke in terms of the number of days between two events, he failed

to notice and eliminate the inconsistency.

4. CONTINENTAL VIDENCE FOR KNOWLEDGE OF WILLIAM'S DEATH

Continental evidence corroborates the conclusion that information about Wil-liam's murder spread independently of Thomas's text. The best-known Continen-

4.8, pp. 173-74; 4.9, pp. 174-75; and he teasel mployed ythe Jews, 5.5, pp. 192-93. Thomasalso recounts vision n whichWilliam old a woman hewould ind a healing pring nder he reewhere his body was discovered, nd William escribed hat spot as his "hermitage," .10, pp. 179-80. The hermitage as probably dentical ith William's aveat the site of his first burial, .13, p.272.

717




tal reference to William's death occurs in the chronicle of Robert of Torigny, abbotof the Norman monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel, who was generally well in-formed about English affairs. In his annal for 1171 Robert reports that CountTheobald of Chartres burned a number of Jews from Blois on the charge of cru-cifying a Christian child in the Easter season.74 He then cites several other incidentsto demonstrate that the Jews regularly commit such outrages at Easter time whenthey have the opportunity, offering William as his first example: "They did thesame with St. William in England at Norwich in the time of King Stephen. He isburied in the cathedral, and many miracles occur at his tomb." The brevity of thisdescription effectively precludes drawing any conclusions about the source of Rob-ert's information. His references to the place of William's tomb and the miracles

correspond to some of the contents of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but Robertmakes very similar statements about St. Richard of Paris, his final example ofJewish brutality.

Robert's chronicle represents one of the numerous continuations of the early-twelfth-century annalistic work by Sigebert of Gembloux,75 and two other contin-uators of Sigebert's work also found William's death worthy of note. Annalists atthe Cistercian monasteries of Mortemer and Ourscamp both inserted notices ofWilliam's death under the year 1146: (Mortemer) "A Iudeis in Anglia puer Wil-lelmus crucifigitur die parasceve urbe Norico";76 (Ourscamp) "Apud NorwicumAngliae civitatem Iudei crucifixerunt puerum quendam christianum, nomine Wil-lelmum, quem etiam foras civitatem ab eis sepultum, divina lux, ut ferunt, supereum emicans declaravit; sicque a fidelibus inventus, honorabiliter est in ecclesiapositus."77 The brief annal from Mortemer is similar to those in the English chron-icles, noting simply that the boy William was crucified by the Jews in Norwich,but it differs from the English texts in placing the event under the year 1146, andit specifies that William died on Good Friday (die parasceve). By contrast, theentry from Ourscamp omits all reference to the Easter season but inserts additionalnarrative elements: that the Jews buried William outside the city; that a divinelight revealed the location of his body; and that following his discovery by thefaithful he was buried with honor in the church. The Ourscamp chronicler's briefreference to the heavenly light demands notice because it contains the only verbal

parallel to the text of Thomas's vita we have yet encountered.78 However, preciselythese words are linked with the phrase ut ferunt ("as they say"), which implies thepossibility of an oral source rather than a written one. Moreover, the minor verbalsimilarity between the Ourscamp text and Thomas's life is less impressive than

74 Robert of Torigny, Chronicle, ed. Richard Howlett, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, HenryII, and Richard I, Rolls Series 82 (London, 1884-89), 4:251-52; ed. D. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS6:520. Robert Chazan, "The Blois Incident of 1171: A Study in Jewish Intercommunal Organization,"Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 36 (1968), 13-31; idem, MedievalJewryin Northern France: A Political and Social History (Baltimore, 1973), p. 48.

75 On Sigebert and his chronicle, see Wilhelm Wattenbach, Robert Holtzmann, and Franz-Josef

Schmale, eds., Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter: Die Zeit der Sachsen und Salier (Darm-stadt, 1978), 2:727-37.

76 Sigeberti auctarium Mortui Maris, ed. D. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS 6:465.77 Sigeberti auctarium Ursicampinum, ed. Bethmann, MGH SS 6:472.78 Cf. Life 1.19, p. 31: "ignea de celo desuper lux subito emicuit" (my emphasis).

718




the factual parallels between the contents of this Continental notice and that ofthe Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

D. L. C. Bethmann, who edited the chronicles of Sigebert and his continuators,

indicates that the core text of the Mortemer annals was transcribed in 1155, andhe identifies the reference to William as one of a series of additions inserted withinthe following decade.79 He also declares that the Ourscamp compiler copied thebeginning of his notice about William from the Mortemer text, expanding it withinformation about the fate of the child's body drawn from another, unspecifiedsource.80 This probably represents an oversimplification of the relationship be-tween these two works, but despite their significant variations in detail, the annalsof Mortemer and Ourscamp are surely not entirely independent of one another,for the houses themselves were closely linked.81 Nevertheless, each author includesdata the other omits, indicating that during the second half of the twelfth centurymore information about William was available in northern France and Normandythan either of them individually chose to record.

Whatever the exact relationship between these two entries may be, the shorternotice in the Mortemer chronicle ultimately proved the more influential in spread-ing information about the cult of St. William to Continental audiences. As inEngland, however, the process was slow. The first evidence of this diffusion ap-pears in the early-thirteenth-century chronicle of Helinand of Froidmont. Heli-nand's monastery in the diocese of Beauvais was a daughter house of Ourscamp,so it is not surprising that he should employ as one of his sources the annals ofthe similarly affiliated abbey of Mortemer. Under the year 1146 he transcribedthe Mortemer author's brief notice of the death of St. William, supplementing itwith an account of a vision in which a youth, also named William, saw the martyrin heaven.82 Helinand's work achieved only limited distribution, but around themiddle of the thirteenth century the famed Dominican encyclopedist Vincent ofBeauvais copied Helinand's entry, including the vision, into his Speculum histo-riale, a work that came to enjoy great popularity and influence.83 Of the manylater historians who borrowed from Vincent's Speculum, the most notable for thecase of St. William was Hartmann Schedel of Nuremberg. Working in the latefifteenth century, Schedel employed Vincent's work or one derived from it whenhe prepared his own chronicle.84 He, too, copied the brief report of William's

79 Bethmann, MGH SS 6:463.

80 Bethmann, MGH SS 6:472.81 Mortemer was originally an independent Benedictine foundation, but in 1137 it affiliated with

the Cistercian order as a daughter house of Ourscamp: L. H. Cottineau, Repertoire topo-bibliogra-phique des abbayes et prieures, 2 (Macon, 1939), cols. 1990-91, 2160-61.

82 Helinand of Froidmont, Chronicon, PL 212:1036-37. On Helinand's life and work, see AnselmeHoste, "Helinand de Froidmont," in Dictionnaire de spiritualite, ascetique et mystique, doctrine ethistoire, 7/1 (1969), 141-44; and the supplement by R. Aubert in Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geo-graphie ecclesiastiques, 23 (1990), 905-6.

83 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculumn istoriale 28.84-85 (Strasbourg: Johann Mentelin, 4 Dec. 1473),4, fols. 96v-97r; or Speculum historiale 27.84-85, in Bibliotheca mundi seu Speculum quadruplex, 4

(Douay, 1624; repr. Graz, 1965), cols. 1125-26.84 For a brief review of Schedel's career with substantial bibliography, see Beatrice Hernad and F. J.

Worstbrock, "Schedel, Hartmann," in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 2nd

ed., 8/2 (1991), 609-21.

719




death, which remained virtually unchanged from the Mortemer annal. He alsoincluded a reference to the vision, but he omitted the text and inserted in its placea woodcut depicting William's martyrdom.85 essopp and James describe Schedel'sillustration, and unaware of the tradition through which he obtained his infor-mation, they simply cite his work as the only image of St. William they could findoutside of Norfolk and Suffolk.86 This tradition is clear and direct, and no greatinterest attaches to the entries in Vincent's Speculum and Schedel's chronicle, forboth simply pass along information they found in obvious sources. Helinand, onthe other hand, demands close attention because he provides a narrative that, inits general form, closely parallels portions of Thomas of Monmouth's hagiogra-phy.

In book 2, among his proofs of William's sanctity, Thomas recounts two visionsthat attest to William's presence in heaven. This practice of citing visions as evi-dence that the soul of a holy man or woman has attained a glorious reward is acommon device in hagiographical literature, and the records of the First Crusadeshow that apparitions were especially important in establishing that the pilgrimswho died on the expedition were martyrs.87 Thomas's seven books contain ac-counts of more than thirty dreams and visions, and nearly all of these are quitetypical of hagiographical texts. Most of them involve visits by William to a widerange of visionaries, offering cures, revealing secrets, foretelling the future, de-manding gifts, and administering punishment.88 Less common, but by no means

unprecedented,are endorsements of William's saintliness and

thaumaturgicalpowers by better-known residents of heaven: the Virgin Mary, St. Catherine, St.Edmund, and, at the end of the work, Thomas Becket.89 In book 2, however,Thomas presents two stories that depart from the typical hagiographical patternand correspond more closely to the literary genre of visions of heaven and hell,of which the best-known example is Dante's Divine Comedy.90

In these accounts, instead of merely receiving supernatural visitors, the vision-

85 Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 12 July 1493), fol. CCIv.The scene of William's crucifixion is one of a series of images depicting sacrilege by and persecutions

of Jews. On Schedel's chronicle and its context, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder:Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1988), pp. 45-47.

86 Life, pp. lxxxvii-lxxxviii.87 Colin Morris, "Martyrs on the Field of Battle before and during the First Crusade," Studies in

Church History 30 (1993), 103-4.88 On visions in Thomas's work generally, see Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (see above, n.

8), pp. 74-75. Apparitions occur most frequently in book 4, where seven of eleven chapters includeat least one vision: Life 4.1-3, 7-10.

89 Life 3.6, pp. 130-31; 3.23, pp. 155-56; 6.10, p. 238; 7.19, pp. 291-93.90 On visions generally, see Peter Dinzelbacher, Vision und Visionsliteratur m Mittelalter, Monogra-

phien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 23 (Stuttgart, 1981); idem, Revelationes, Typologie des Sourcesdu Moyen Age Occidental 57 (Turnhout, 1991); and H. Fros, "Visionum medii aevi Latini reperto-rium," in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. W Verbeke et al. (Louvain, 1988),pp. 481-98. Eileen Gardiner, Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook (New York, 1993),provides extensive bibliography concerning the particular subgenre, and Jacques Le Goff offers a briefreview of common features of these narratives in "The Learned and Popular Dimensions of Journeysin the Otherworld in the Middle Ages," in Steven L. Kaplan, ed., Understanding Popular Culture:Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin, 1984), p. 24.

720



aries are themselves transported to infernal and celestial regions. The first ofThomas's stories, about four hundred words in length, involves a man namedLewin who, while gravely ill, passed into a three-day trance.91 Leaving his body

justbefore Easter of

1144,he was conducted

byan

angelto a

placewhere he saw

many people in torment. Thomas offers no details of their sufferings, but he saysthat Lewin saw people he had known in life. Lewin and the angel then entered adelightful region, where he saw the Lord sitting on a throne with the Virgin at hisright hand and a boy of about twelve at his feet. The boy had a radiant face, wasdressed in white, and wore a gold crown set with gems. All the saints and angelsin heaven did him honor. Lewin inquired about the youth, and his angelic guidereplied that this was William, whom the Jews had killed in Norwich in mockeryof the Lord's passion, and that Lewin would find a cure for his illness at William'stomb. Thereupon, Lewin awoke and told his story, and his father set off for Nor-wich to find the promised remedy.

Thomas's second account of William's appearance in a vision of the hereaftercomes immediately after the first, and the author states explicitly that althoughthe visions were granted to different people at different times, he has placed themtogether because of the similarity of their subject matter.92 The differences in detailare fairly numerous. The visionary is a young girl, not in need of a cure butreligious for her age, who was visited by a white dove and was herself turned intoa dove for the duration of her journey. Her story is somewhat longer than Lewin's,although still less than five hundred words, and Thomas narrates it in the firstperson, claiming to have heard it from the damsel herself. These differences be-tween the girl's report and Lewin's are minor compared with their similarities.The maid flew with her guide to a place of punishment. She refers to the stench,darkness, heat, and cold, and she states generally that she witnessed souls sufferinga variety of punishments, but she declares that she lacks the power to describe thedetails of what she saw there. The doves then flew to the heavens where the maidensaw the Lord in his judgment seat with his mother Mary on his right. Standingnext to the Virgin was a beautiful boy dressed in a garment that seemed to be cutfrom the same cloth as the Lord's, and all the residents of heaven did him greathonor. The girl asked who the boy might be, and her guide said he was Williamthe martyr, killed by the Jews at Norwich in derision of Christ's passion. The doveadded an explanation of the child's dress: "because by that death and passion ofhis he followed Christ, so Christ has not disdained to make him equal to Himselfin

the honour of his purple robe." Then, after hearing a voice from the thronecommanding her to preserve her virginity and accept William as her special patron,the girl flew home.

Helinand's vision story is somewhat longer than either of Thomas's, extendingto more than 550 words. In this case the visionary, a fifteen-year-old youth namedWilliam, saw in his sleep the splendid figure of a man who led him on a journey

91 Life 2.4, pp. 67-70. It is tempting to regard Lewin as a youth. The other visionaries who sawWilliam in heaven were children, and Lewin's father did much of the work required to obtain his son'scure. But Thomas usually refers to Lewin simply as eger, "the sick one," and does not mention his age.Thomas does in one instance apply to Lewin the term homo (p. 67), but he never calls him vir.

92Life 2.5, pp. 74-77.





that lasted nearly four days. The pair traveled first to a realm in which soulssuffered punishment, and in contrast to the vague references in Thomas's narra-tives, Helinand describes seven distinct forms of torment. The boy then gazed intothe mouth of hell, and an evil spirit began to accuse him of many grievous sins.Although nearly overcome with fear, the child fortified himself with the sign ofthe cross, and the pit disappeared. Then the boy and his guide proceeded to arealm of great light. There they saw enormous crowds of the blessed in variousstages of glory, and they came upon a group of splendid men who waited uponone of their number, who wore a gold crown decorated with twelve gold crosses.The escort told his young companion that this would be his place if he lived as heshould. The guide also identified the honored member of the group as the boyWilliam, whom the Jews had crucified in Norwich, and he added, "Although heis now in great glory for his brief suffering, he shall at length have still greaterdistinction. However, he is not yet worthy to look upon the face of the Redeemer,nor are his companions, whom you see in such great glory."93 Then, remindingthe boy that he could return to this place if he labored well on earth, the guidetook William back to his home, where he awoke.

Clearly, William's vision as described by Helinand shows striking similarities tothe experiences of Lewin and the girl that Thomas recounts. However, the signif-icance of Helinand's account depends upon its origin. If it ultimately derives-even indirectly-from Thomas's vita, then it offers unique testimony to the influ-ence of that work. But if it has another source, then it constitutes a major additionto the evidence indicating that information about St. William spread indepep-dently of Thomas's hagiography.

Besides the broad parallels that are obvious at a glance, a number of minorsimilarities raise the possibility of a connection between William's vision andLewin's. In the first place, the names-WillelmuslGuillelmus and Lewinus-con-tain enough comparable elements to facilitate confusion, and Helinand introducesthe name of the dreamer immediately after his brief report of St. William's cruci-fixion. Similarly Helinand's statement that William received his vision at age fifteendoes not conflict with the implied, but never explicitly stated, youthfulness ofLewin. Finally, both accounts place the visions in the Easter season.

Despite these similarities, Helinand's account differs sharply from Thomas's inits focus. In its concrete descriptions of souls in torment and specific details aboutthe realm of glory, Helinand's story is typical of its visionary genre. By contrast,both of Thomas's tales are quite vague about the particulars of hell and heaven,except insofar as they contribute to the image of St. William occupying a place ofhonor near Christ. Even these differences, however, might arise from easily expli-cable editing by one or both of the authors. Thomas's purpose was hagiographical,and he might well have reworked the stories he had heard, reducing details ofpunishments and pleasures to sharpen the narrative focus on William. Indeed, thesimilarity of his two reports in this regard makes such editing seem very likely.But Helinand could equally well have taken a story that emphasized William and

93 "Hic, licet jam sit in magna gloria pro brevi poena, longe tamen adhuc majorem habebit. Nondumtamen faciem Redemptoris contemplari meruit, nec socii ejus, quos in tanta gloria cernis," Helinand,Chronicon, col. 1037.

722




added details about the visionary's journey. Other passages in his chronicle attestto his extensive acquaintance with the conventions of the genre. Clearly an avidcollector of such reports, Helinand tells of William's vision under 1146; earlier in

his chronicle he presents the vision of Charles the Fat (888), and later he recountsthe visions of Tundal (1149), a monk of Melrose (1160), and Gunthelm (1161).94William of Norwich is central to both of Thomas's stories, and in each case,

the purpose of the narrative is to offer proof that the company of heaven honorshim as a martyr. For Helinand, on the other hand, the inclusion of William is onlya minor variation on a standard theme, a variation that justifies inserting the storyinto the annal for 1146 in conjunction with the notice of William's murder. Thisdifference in the two authors' points of view provides the key to interpreting thesignificance of the most fundamental inconsistency in their stories. In both of hisnarratives Thomas stresses that William is not merely in heaven or even in thepresence of Christ, but that he is physically close and nearly equal to his Lord.Helinand, however, states quite explicitly that-despite the manner of his death-William does not yet merit the beatific vision.

This variation supports the view that Helinand's account is not ultimately de-rived from Thomas's vita. Either of our authors could have edited his text, and iteasy to see why Thomas, encountering this element in a story he had heard, mighthave chosen to delete the qualification of William's sanctity. On the other hand,it is difficult to imagine why Helinand or some intermediary author, beginningwith a story of the sort Thomas tells, would have altered the tale to demote Wil-liam from the ranks of those associated most closely with God himself, a positionof honor that is central to both of Thomas's vision stories.

,Given this situation, the likelihood that Helinand's account derives fromThomas's seems extremely remote. Thomas himself describes two visions of Wil-liam's reward, and there may have been more. Thus, it seems most likely that thesimilarities between Helinand's narrative and Thomas's are due to their derivationeither from a common source or from parallel stories that began to circulate fol-lowing William's death.

To demonstrate conclusively that Helinand's story came directly from Norwichis impossible. Nevertheless, the appearance of St. William is not the only evidenceof its English origin. When Helinand's young visionary stared into the mouth ofhell-an element common to such stories but without parallel in either ofThomas's narratives-he estimated its depth to be greater than the distance from

Dorobernia to London. Dorobernia can refer either to Canterbury or to Dover,but this ambiguity does not affect the fundamental point that this narrative, al-though preserved in a Continental chronicle, was originally directed at an Englishaudience.

Helinand's report adds to the evidence that information about St. William cir-culated both in England and on the Continent independently of Thomas of Mon-

94 Cols. 875-78, 1038-55, 1059-60, and 1060-63. For literature on these visions, see the workscited in n. 90 above.

723




mouth's hagiography. However, nearly all of that evidence appears in sourcescomposed after Thomas's vita. The one exception is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,which is approximately contemporary with Thomas's composition. Thus, in everycase, the date of the text makes it difficult to preclude absolutely the possibilitythat the central elements of ritual murder and of crucifixion in particular do notderive from oral transmission of ideas that originated with Thomas, even whendirect influence of his text is lacking.

In this situation, particular significance attaches to the appearance of a noticefor St. William in a German martyrology that dates from the middle of the twelfthcentury. The core of the text is an eleventh-century martyrology attributed toHerman the Lame of Reichenau, but it has been augmented with the addition ofsome four hundred brief notices commemorating individuals or groups of saintsnot mentioned in Herman's original.9 This enlarged edition of Herman's workexists in four manuscripts, all from the twelfth century and all from religioushouses in Bavaria.96 None of the manuscripts contains any specific indication ofwho was responsible for the expanded redaction, but external evidence establishesthat it was the work of Paul of Bernried, probably with the collaboration of hislifelong companion, Gebhard.97 Both men spent much of their careers in andaround Regensburg, and they were active in the circle of Gregorian reformers insouthern Germany in the first half of the twelfth century.98 Paul's martyrology isparticularly noteworthy for the wide geographical range of saints it eulogizes, andit

presentsthe

following entryunder 17

April: "Apud AnglosWillehelmi

pueria

Iudeis crucifixi."99 The day assigned to the notice is unattested elsewhere,100,butthere can be no doubt that the boy-saint commemorated is William of Norwich.And the text specifies that he suffered crucifixion.

Paul's martyrology is undoubtedly the result of a process of compilation thatextended over many years, and the time at which he added this particular noticeis uncertain. Nevertheless, a combination of internal and external evidence does

95Neither Herman's martyrology nor the augmented Bavarian recension has been published. OnHerman's work in general and his martyrology in particular, see Franz-Josef Schmale, "Hermann vonReichenau," in Verfasserlexikon (see above, n. 84), 3 (1981), 1082-90; Arno Borst, "Ein Forschungs-

bericht Hermanns des Lahmen," Deutsches Archiv fir Erforschung des Mittelalters 40 (1984), 379-477; Ernst Diimmler, "Das Martyrologium Notkers und seine Verwandten," Forschungen zurdeutschen Geschichte 25 (1885), 208-20; and John M. McCulloh, "Herman the Lame's Martyrologythrough Four Centuries of Scholarship," Analecta Bollandiana 104 (1986), 349-70.

96Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 1071 from Oberaltaich, Clm 5256 from Chiemsee, andClm 2258 from Wessobrunn; as well as Linz, Bundesstaatliche Studienbibliothek, cod. 332 (olim 258)from Suben am Inn.

97McCulloh, "Herman the Lame's Martyrology," p. 353, n. 16. On Paul and his work, see RudolfSchieffer, "Paul von Bernried," in Verfasserlexikon (see above, n. 84) 7/2 (1988), 359-64.

98Claudia Martl, "Regensburg in den geistigen Auseinandersetzungen des Investiturstreits," Deut-sches Archiv fiir Erforschung des Mittelalters 42 (1986), 145-91, esp. pp. 179-80.

99Diimmler, "Das Martyrologium Notkers," p. 216.100Although no other text mentions 17 April (XV Kl. Mai.), it is quite close to several other dates

associated with St. William: John of Tynemouth's Sanctilogium assigns the Life of William to 15 April(XVII Kl. Mai.); William's first translation, the transfer of his corpse from the wood to the monk'scemetery, occurred on 24 April (VIII Kl. Mai.) 1144; and his second translation, from the cemetery tothe chapter house, on 12 April (II Id. Apr.) 1150. Given the association of William's death with theEaster season, the incidence of Good Friday on 18 April (XIIII Kl. Mai.) in 1147 may also be significant.

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suggest a period within which the text as we now know it began to circulate.William is the most recent saint common to all the manuscripts of Paul's compi-lation, so his death in 1144 establishes the terminus before which the work could

not have been finished. The latest possible date is less easy to fix, but severalindications suggest that it was before Thomas composed the earliest books of hisLife of St. William. For one thing, the deaths of the compilers seem to fall in thelate 1140s and early 1150s. Paul of Bernried was alive in 1146, but there is nodatable evidence for later activity on his part, and Gebhard may have surviveduntil 1151, but he was certainly dead by 1156.101

Internal evidence from the martyrology likewise points to the later 1140s as thetime the text began to circulate. The four extant manuscripts of Paul's martyrologyfall into two groups based on their contents. As noted, all of the four present acommon core drawn from Herman's martyrology and supplemented with addi-tional entries, including that for St. William. However, two of the copies preservea somewhat later stage in the ongoing compilation, for they contain nearly twodozen notices that the other manuscripts do not share.102 Most of the saints in-volved are figures from centuries past who had somehow escaped Paul's noticeearlier, but one of them was another recent martyr, a bishop of Edessa, whomPaul identified as Samuel.

The Armenian city of Edessa had become the seat of a Latin principality in 1098in the course of the First Crusade, but in 1144 it was invaded by Zengi, the Turkishatabeg of Mosul. After a four-week siege the city fell on Christmas Eve, and amongthe many inhabitants who died in the conquest was the bishop. Within a fewmonths, several embassies from the crusader states appeared at the papal court

requestingaid, and when

Pope EugeniusIII issued a bull on 1 December 1145

summoning the faithful to assist their brothers against the Muslims, he cited thefate of Edessa as a concrete example of the infidel threat.103 he result of Eugenius'sappeal was the Second Crusade, which enlisted the participation of both KingLouis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany. Although the expeditionitself was a failure, the crusade was frequently mentioned by the historians andchroniclers of Latin Europe, and the symbolic value attributed to the capture ofEdessa assured that many of these authors reported that event as well.104 Some ofthese writers also noted the death of the bishop, but not a single one of themmentioned him by name. The only author to identify this cleric was the renowned

101Franz Fuchs, Bildung und Wissenschaft in Regensburg: Neue Forschungen und Texte aus St.

Mang in Stadtamhof, Beitrage zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 13 (Sigmaringen,1989), p. 87. The possibility that Gebhard was alive in 1151 is based on a forged charter of thethirteenth century.

102 The two manuscripts containing the additions are those from Chiemsee and Suben; see n. 96above.

103 On the embassies and Eugenius's response, see Virginia G. Berry, "The Second Crusade," n K. M.Setton, gen. ed., A History of the Crusades, 1, 2nd ed. (Madison, Wis., 1969), pp. 466-67.

104 Reinhold Rihricht, Beitrige zur Geschichte der Kreuzziige, 2 (Berlin, 1878), pp. 92-93, listsboth Eastern and Western sources that refer to the fall of Edessa, and Wilhelm Bernhardi, Konrad III.(Leipzig, 1883; repr. Berlin, 1975), pp. 513-14, n. 25, names additional Western texts.

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historian of the Latin East, William of Tyre, who wrote between about 1170 and1184, and he called the prelate not Samuel but Hugh.105The universal failure of Western writers to identify the man whose death reified

the Muslim threat to the Holy Land makes it virtually certain that his identitywas unknown in Europe when the preaching of the Second Crusade began in1146. Most likely, then, either Paul of Bernried obtained his name for the bishoplater, perhaps from a returning crusader, or he simply invented it. The inaccuracyof Paul's appellation suggests that it might be fictitious, but evidence from othersources indicates that Paul took pains to ensure the accuracy of his information.Several of his letters reveal his unwillingness to insert a notice for a saint when heknew the individual's name but not the date of his death.106 Furthermore, a namewas not an absolute prerequisite to commemoration in a martyrology. Paul's ad-ditions to Herman's text include no case in which an unnamed individual is theprimary object of a eulogy, but he does memorialize several famous groups-theone thousand martyrs of Armenia on 22 June and the eleven thousand virgins ofCologne on 21 October-without naming any of their members. Moreover, on anumber of occasions Paul follows a common practice of martyrologists and com-memorates a named martyr along with his unnamed companions. One such caseis that of Samuel, who, Paul says, died in Edessa with "very many other clerics ofvarious grades and lay folk of the city."107

In all likelihood, then, Paul of Bernried did not invent "Samuel" of Edessa, andthe evidence that this ecclesiastic was

widely recognizedas a

symbolbut

virtuallyunknown as an individual suggests that Paul did not glean the name from the firstreports out of the East or from the official papal attempt to provoke a response.He might, however, have heard it reported among the rumors that circulated inthe year between August 1146, when preaching of the crusade began in Germany,and July 1147, when the French army followed the path of the German contingentthrough Regensburg.108 Thereafter, returning crusaders could also have broughtnews from points east at any time from the date of their departure to the returnof the last pilgrim, and King Conrad was back in Germany by the summer of

105 Willelmi Tyrensis archiepiscopi Chronicon 16.5, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum,Continuatio Mediaeualis, 63A (Turnhout, 1986), pp. 720-21. On the date of William's composition,see Peter W. Edbury and John Gordon Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge,Eng., 1988), p. 26. Although the Latin bishop died at Edessa, two other pontiffs survived: the Syrian,Jacobite bishop Basil and the Armenian bishop John; see Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades(Cambridge, Eng., 1951), 2:240.

106 Paul and Gebhard wrote two letters to Martin, treasurer of the cathedral of Milan, stating thatthey had omitted Bishop Ampellius of Milan from their martyrology because they did not know thedate of his death and asking about the date for Peter Damian as well: Marco Magistretti, "Una cor-respondenza ambrosiana del secolo XII," La scuola cattolica 25 (1897), 502-3.

107 (. .. et aliorum plurimorum diversi ordinis clericorum et laicorum civitatis." Several examples ofnotices, apparently related to the crusading movement, in which all of the martyrs are anonymousappear as unique additions to the Oberaltaich manuscript: 20 April, "Item xl peregrinorum a Turcispro Christo occisorum"; and 14 June, "Eodem die decem episcoporum et aliorum plurimorum pere-grinorum in mare pro Christi amore submersorum."

108 On the events of this period, see Berry (see above, n. 103), pp. 472-87, and Bernhardi (see above,n. 104), pp. 522-62, 591-604.

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1149.109 Paul, whose additions to the working copy of his martyrology probablytook the form of notes on interleaved pieces of parchment or entries in the marginsof the book, would probably have inserted the information shortly after he ob-

tained it. Indeed, the longer he waited, the less likely he would have been tocommemorate this particular cleric. William of Tyre reported that the populaceof Edessa criticized the bishop for hoarding money that could have helped financethe city's defense and that he died, not in glorious martyrdom, but in flight, crushedin the crowd trying to escape the Turkish onslaught. This information, probablyunknown in the West when the crusade began, could well have been current inthe East when the crusaders arrived. Moreover, the wave of discouragement andrecrimination that moved over Europe in the wake of the unsuccessful crusadealso suggests that an earlier date would be preferable to a later one. Many Westernhistorians found little they wished to record about the expedition,'10 and the mar-tyrologist could well have shared their pessimism. Indeed, one of the most vocalcritics of the crusade, Gerhoh of Reichersberg, was associated with the circle ofRegensburg reformers, to which Paul and Gebhard also belonged.ll

The absence of a notice for the saintly emperor Henry II also suggests that thesecond redaction of Paul of Bernried's martyrology was already in use by the later1140s. Despite Paul's clear sympathies with the Gregorian reform party, the corpusof his additions to Herman's martyrology reveals a notable desire to include thenames of royal figures who had gained recognition for sanctity. Seven kings andthree queens are among the saints common to all four manuscripts of his work,112and Paul's continuing eagerness to commemorate royal saints is attested in hissecond edition by an entry on 2 April for Matilda, the wife of King Henry I of

Englandand mother-in-law of

Emperor HenryV. With all these other entries for

holy rulers, the absence of the emperor Henry II from Paul's martyrology is par-ticularly striking. Henry died in 1024, and he was canonized by Pope EugeniusIII in 1146. Yet only one manuscript of Paul's work includes a notice for Henryas part of its text as originally written, and this addition is certainly independentof Paul's compilation.ll3

Like most medieval texts, Paul of Bernried's martyrology defies absolute dating.

109Giles Constable, "The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries," Traditio 9 (1953), 266,estimates that news of the crusaders' defeats probably reached the West "before the end of 1147."Conrad left the Holy Land on 8 September 1148 and arrived in Salzburg before 21 June 1149: Bern-

hardi (see above, n. 104), pp. 680, 757.110 Constable, "Second Crusade," pp. 215, 266-76.111Peter Classen, Gerhoch von Reichersberg: Eine Biographie (Wiesbaden, 1960), pp. 25-26, 34,

55-56; and Martl, "Regensburg" (see above, n. 98), esp. pp. 158, 179-80.112 The kings include the Frank Clodoald (St. Cloud; 7 September), the Dane Cnut (10 July), the

Norwegian Olaf (29 July), the Hungarian Stephen (20 August and his son Henry at 28 June), andthree English monarchs, Edward the martyr (18 March), Oswald of Northumbria (4 August), andEdmund of East Anglia (20 November). The royal women are Balthild, queen of the Franks (30/31January), and Edith (7 August) and Adalheid (18 December), both wives of Otto I of Germany.

113 A notice for Henry was written as part of the original text in the manuscript from Suben (S). Forthe most part the contents of this codex correspond so closely to the text of the Chiemsee manuscript(C) that S appears to have been copied from C. C also contains a notice for Henry, but it is in theform of a marginal notation by a hand much later than those that wrote the texts of the two manu-

scripts.

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Nevertheless, its transmission in two versions representing different stages pro-vides some chronological points of reference. William's commemoration in thefirst stage ensures that it was completed after March of 1144, and the referenceto the fall of Edessa indicates that the second stage appeared after December ofthe same year. The latest possible date for each of the stages remains undetermined.Nevertheless, the indications that do exist-the likely death dates of Paul andGebhard, the notice for Samuel, and the lack of one for Henry-all suggest thateven the later version of Paul's martyrology began to circulate before 1150, wellbefore Thomas of Monmouth wrote his Life of St. William.

This conclusion carries several significant implications. In the first place it con-firms the other, later evidence that information circulated about William of Nor-wich that did not derive from Thomas of Monmouth's hagiography. Second, itindicates that this independent tradition included the claim that William had beencrucified by the Jews. Third, it demonstrates that the earliest extant documentaryevidence, regarding not only his death but also his veneration as a saint, comesnot from England but from Bavaria.

5. FROM NORWICH O GERMANY

How did William, whose cult is generally thought to have been very restricted,come to be known so far from home? Certainly, Paul of Bernried could have

obtained his information directly from England through a personal contact. Suchcontact is not verifiable, but the unusually broad geographical representation ofthe saints in Paul's martyrology attests to his wide-ranging connections.114 ndeed,Paul's additions to Herman's martyrology include twenty-six commemorations ofEnglish saints, many of whom were unknown-or nearly so-on the Conti-nent.115 Yet compared with the others, the child martyr of Norwich appears outof place both chronologically and geographically. Except for William in his firstedition and Queen Matilda in his second, all of Paul's English saints are from theAnglo-Saxon period,l16 and many of them find no mention in liturgical texts fromNorwich and its diocese.117 Apparently, then, Paul acquired his information aboutWilliam independently of the source or sources that underlie his other Englishnotices.

Two bishops of Norwich traveled to the Continent in the 1140s. Everard ofCalne, who was bishop at the time of William's death, resigned his position in

114McCulloh, Herman he Lame'sMartyrology" seeabove, . 95), p. 353.115February: Laurentius, Mathildis; arch: Ceadda, 8Edwardus; pril: 7Willehelmus, 9

Elphegus, 4 Egbertus, 9/30Erchenwaldus; ay: Eadbertus, 9Dunstanus, 6Beda; uly: Swithi-nus, 7 Ethelburga, 3/14Mildreda, 7 Erchenwaldus; ugust: Oswaldus; eptember: Guthlacus,19 Theodorus, 0Honorius; ctober: Ositha, 1Ethelburga, 3Wilfridus, 0 Acca;November: 0Iustus, 7 Hilda, 20/21 Eadmundus. atilda 4 February) nd Bede 26 May) appear nly n thesecond dition.

116The most ecent s the martyred rchbishop lphege IElfheah) fCanterbury, hodied n 1012.117 Of the twenty-six nglish aints n Paul's martyrology, nly hree re common o the calendars

examined by Cockerell and James, Two East Anglian Psalters see above, n. 69): Dunstan, Oswald,and Edmund. he exts rom Norwich athedral ddOsith ndWilliam, ut heypresentWilliam n24 March s opposed o 17 April n the martyrology.

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1145 and retired to the Cistercian monastery of Fontenay in the Cote-d'Or.118 Hissuccessor, William Turbe, attended Eugenius III's great council at Reims in 1148,a meeting that drew representatives from throughout the western church.119 ither

of these men or some member of his entourage could have borne news of St.William to Europe, but at the time of their respective journeys neither bishop wasan enthusiastic promoter of William's sanctity.120 Moreover, these are only themost visible examples of contacts by which this information might have traveled.

A century ago, Elphege Vacandard opined that William's story could havehelped to incite anti-Jewish violence during the preaching of the Second Crusadein 1146; and although he lacked any solid basis for that view, others have acceptedthe logic of his suggestion.l21 Hitherto the strongest evidence for this possibilitywas circumstantial: first, the rough chronological coincidence between William'sdeath and the wave of anti-Semitism that accompanied preparations for the ex-pedition; and second, the murder at Wiirzburg in 1147 that was attributed to the

Jews. The discovery of Paul of Bernried's eulogy of St. William that dates fromthis same period encourages a reexamination of these events.

The crusades, from their inception, were accompanied by violence against Jews.Tensions between the religious majority and minority had existed for centuries,and brutal attacks on Jews were not unprecedented.122 However, the months be-tween December 1095 and July 1096, the period of preparation for the FirstCrusade, marked a turning point in Christian-Jewish relations: the gathering offorces in preparation for war against the enemies of Christ in the East broughtwith it the first large-scale pogroms against the presumed enemies of Christ athome. First in France and then in the Rhineland, crusaders attacked Jewish com-munities,

killingand

pillagingthe inhabitants, often despite attempts by ecclesi-

astical authorities to protect the victims.l23 A half century later, after receiving

118 John Le Neve, Fasti ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066-1300, 2: Monastic Cathedrals Northern ndSouthern Provinces), compiled by Diana E. Greenway London, 1971), pp. 55-56; ChristopherHarper-Bill n English Episcopal Acta, 6: Norwich, 1070-1214 (Oxford, 1990), p. xxxiii.

119Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, 1/2, ed. D. White-lock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1981), pp. 817-20; Christopher Harper-Bill, "BishopWilliam Turbe and the Diocese of Norwich, 1146-1174," Anglo-Norman Studies 7 (1984), 143. Onattendance from the province of Salzburg, see Classen, Gerhoch von Reichersberg (see above, n. 111),p. 134.

120 Everard's failure to promote the cult has been universally recognized, and the view that Bishop

William did accept the child's sanctity has been almost unanimous as well. Lotter, however, has recentlypointed out that even Bishop William hesitated to commit himself until sometime after the third trans-lation in 1151, "Innocens virgo et martyr" (see above, n. 8), pp. 32-33, 40-42.

121 E. Vacandard, Vie de saint Bernard, abbe de Clairvaux, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1897), 2:286-87; Run-ciman, A History of the Crusades (see above, n. 105), 2:255 n; Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich(see above, n. 62), p. 57n. Vacandard cites only the notices of William's death in the annals of Mor-temer and Ourscamp; Runciman and Lipman refer to Vacandard.

122 For developments before the First Crusade, see Robert Chazan, "1007-1012: Initial Crisis forNorthern European Jewry," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 38-39 (1970-1971), 101-17; idem, Medieval Jewry in Northern France (see above, n. 74), pp. 12-13; Daniel FCallahan, "Ademar of Chabannes, Millennial Fears, and the Development of Western Anti-Judaism,"Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995), 19-35; and Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and theDeceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989-1034 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 40-46.

123 All of the standard histories of the First Crusade review these events, e.g., Runciman, A History

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word of the fall of Edessa, Pope Eugenius III undertook to launch a second majorexpedition to defend the Latin states that the first crusaders had established inOutremer. Hoping to enlist Louis VII of France as the leader of the new crusade,Eugenius relied on his own former teacher, Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, to winLouis to the cause. The effective leader of the burgeoning Cistercian order, themost prominent churchman in Europe, and a preacher of extraordinary power,Bernard managed to recruit the king and enlist widespread support among theFrench knightly class.

While Bernard toured the kingdom exhorting potential participants and sup-porters, Rudolph (or Radulf), another Cistercian, spread a more radical messagein northern France and the Rhineland. Although he lacked authorization for hispreaching, Rudolph provoked an enthusiastic response when he urged the Chris-tians to attack not only the Muslims abroad but also the Jews at home.124 Hisvisits to Cologne, Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Strasbourg, and other cities led to violentpersecutions of the Jewish populations and an impassioned response from Bernardas well. The abbot sent letters and messengers to recall his monk to obedience,but without success. So Bernard had to travel personally to Mainz in early No-vember 1146 to bring the episode to a close. Even then, Rudolph's popular fol-lowing was so large and enthusiastic that only Bernard's reputation for sanctityprotected him from the renegade's supporters. Whether Rudolph's sermons con-tained references to William of Norwich remains uncertain, but the preacher

would undoubtedly have exploited the case if he had known of it. Surely the claimthat the Jews had recently crucified a Christian child would have added immediacyto the message that they already deserved punishment for the killing of Christ.Indeed, Rudolph's use of this example, or at least its dissemination during theperiod of his anti-Jewish activity, could explain one noteworthy characteristic ofthe Continental annals that record William's death. With the exception of theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, the English reports place the child's murder in 1144, butthe interrelated chronicles of Mortemer, Ourscamp, and Helinand of Froidmont-all Cistercian compilations-assign this event to 1146. Rudolph sowed his mes-sage of hatred in the summer and autumn of that year, and it would be hardly

of the Crusades see above, n. 105), 1:134-47; Frederic Duncalf, "The First Crusade: rom Claremontto Constantinople," n Setton, History of the Crusades see above, n. 103), 1:263-65; and JonathanRiley-Smith, The First Crusade nd the Idea of Crusading London, 1986), pp. 50-57. Recent spe-cialized tudies nclude Robert Chazan, European ewry and the First Crusade Berkeley, alif., 1987);J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Persecution f the Jews," Studies n Church History 21(1984), 51-72; and Norman Golb, "New Light on the Persecution f French ews at the Time of theFirst Crusade," roceedings f the American Academy or Jewish Research 4 (1966), 1-63. GavinI. Langmuir elates hese events o long-term evelopments n Christianity n "From Ambrose f Milanto Emicho of Leiningen: he Transformation f Hostility against Jews in Northern Christendom," nGli Ebrei nell'alto medioevo, Settimane i Studio del Centro taliano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 26(Spoleto, 1989), 1:313-68. Yuval, "Vengeance nd Damnation" see above, n. 5), sees the events of1096 as providing he basis of the ritual murder ibel.

124 Vacandard, Vie de saint Bernard see above, n. 121), 2:284-91; Julius Aronius, Regesten urGeschichte der Juden im frdnkischen und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273 (Berlin, 1902; repr.Hildesheim, 1970), nos. 232-39, 242-43, pp. 107-12; Bernhardi, Konrad III. (see above, n. 104),pp. 522-25; and Berry, "The Second Crusade" (see above, n. 103), pp. 472-73.

730




surprising if the atrocity that seemed to substantiate the continuing crimes of theJews should come to be popularly assigned to the immediately preceding Easter.

A few months after the Rhenish pogroms, anti-Jewish violence erupted again

following a murder that shows some parallels to the case of St. William. In lateFebruary 1147, as soldiers gathered in Wiirzburg to accompany Conrad III on themarch to the Holy Land, the Christians discovered the dismembered body of aman named Theodoric.125 Blaming the Jews for his murder, both crusaders andinhabitants set upon the city's Jewish population, killing more than twenty. The-odoric's remains were carried to a hospice below the town and buried outside thechurch, where miracles began to occur at his tomb. The crusaders venerated himas a martyr, and as Easter approached, they demanded official approval of hiscult. When they met with opposition from the clergy, they attempted to stone thebishop and terrorized the cathedral canons before finally departing for the HolyLand.

This case of a murder blamed on the Jews in which the victim was popularlyregarded as a saint has led some scholars to see it as an indication that rumors ofWilliam's death in Norwich had reached Germany by 1147.'26 Others have ques-tioned this connection, emphasizing the lack of evidence for any ritual element inthe Wiirzburg case.127 Most recently, Israel Yuval has set the entire debate on itshead. Emphasizing that Thomas of Monmouth wrote his life of St. William afterthe Wiirzburg incident, Yuval contends that the ritual murder accusation surfacedfirst on the Continent and that its appearance in Norwich represents, not a patternfor, but a copy of, its European manifestation.

The full significance of the Wiirzburg case is difficult to determine because theinformation about it is limited.

Knowledgeof William's case or

anyother ritual

murder accusation was certainly no prerequisite for treating Theodoric as a saint,for the records of the First Crusade provide ample evidence of a popular desire toregard any death on the expedition as a martyrdom, even when it involved nocontact with the foe.128 Likewise, given the recent history of Christian violenceagainst Jews, the crusaders certainly thought of the Jews as their enemies and

125 Annales Herbipolenses, .a. 1147, ed. Georg Pertz, MGH SS 16:3-4; Ephraim f Bonn, SeferZekhirah, n Shlomo Eidelberg, rans., The Jews and the Crusaders: he Hebrew Chronicles f theFirst and Second Crusades Madison, Wis., 1977), p. 127; Aronius, Regesten, no. 245, pp. 113-14;Lotter, "Innocens irgo et martyr" see above, n. 8), pp. 48-49; and Peter Herde, "Probleme erchristlich-jiudischen eziehungen n Mainfranken m Mittelalter," Wiirzburger iozesan-Geschichts-bldtter 0 (1978), 85.

126 Most recently Lotter, "Innocens irgo et martyr" see above, n. 8), p. 49, who emphasizes heveneration f Theodoric nd the lack of any evidence or other ritual murder harges n Germany ntilthe 1230s.

127 Herde, "Probleme" see above, n. 125), p. 85; Gavin I. Langmuir, Labsence d'accusation emeurtre ituel a l'ouest du Rh6ne," uifs et judaisme de Languedoc, Cahiers eFanjeaux 2 (Toulouse,1977), pp. 236-37.

128 For a survey of varieties f martyrdom uring he First Crusade, eeJonathan Riley-Smith, irstCrusade see above, n. 123), pp. 114-19, who shows that even victims of disease were regarded smartyrs; f. Langmuir, L'absence 'accusation," . 237. H. E. J. Cowdrey, Martyrdom nd the FirstCrusade," n Peter W. Edbury, d., Crusade nd Settlement Cardiff, 1985), pp. 46-56, esp. p. 50,notes that references o martyrdom ppear more frequently n the works of authors who stayed athome than those who took part n the crusade.

731




would be predisposed to believe they could commit a particularly heinous crime.Thus the Wiirzburg case is one that could easily arise in the climate of crusadingfervor in general and anti-Jewish sentiments in particular, but reports that the Jewshad murdered a child in England would certainly have contributed to that climateand to the popular willingness to see them all as vicious killers.

The notice in Paul of Bernried's martyrology confirms the rapid spread of in-formation about William of Norwich to Germany, and it represents the strongestevidence yet discovered that the crusaders in Wiirzburg in 1147 could have heardof William's death. By contrast, no similar documentation has appeared to supportthe view that information about any specific case of ritual murder might havetraveled from the Continent to England. The existence of Paul's eulogy for Williamalso calls attention to the absence from his martyrology of a corresponding noticefor Theodoric of Wiirzburg and assures that Theodoric's omission does not reflecta general skepticism on Paul's part about ritual murder. This omission could alsoindicate that Paul had died before the Wiirzburg incident, but if that were thecase, it would likewise offer assurance that news of William's death had arrivedbefore then. The more likely explanation is simply that Paul doubted Theodoric'ssanctity. He certainly knew that responsible clerics rejected the claims that The-odoric was a martyr,129 ut he was probably unaware that similar skepticism aboutthe circumstances of William's death existed in Norwich. Viewed in this light Paul'snotice for William simultaneously buttresses the claims for the priority of the ritualmurder accusation in Norwich and increases the likelihood that the

Wiirzburgcase had a ritual element as well.

6. THE ORIGINS OF THE RITUAL MURDER CHARGE N NORWICH

The external evidence considered thus far, especially the Continental evidence,argues very strongly that the legend of William's crucifixion was well establishedbefore the translation of his body in 1150, and the internal evidence for the dateof The Life and Passion of St. William makes it virtually impossible that Thomasof Monmouth could have invented the charge. Evidence from the narrative sup-ports the same conclusion. Thomas describes the crucifixion as a matter of fact,but when he relates what contemporaries said about the event, he does not identifyanyone who specified the manner of the child's death. Langmuir assumes thatattributing the crucifixion story to a third party would have strengthenedThomas's case for William's sanctity and that he would have done so if he couldhave. Therefore, his failure to do so is evidence that the crucifixion charge was aproduct of Thomas's imagination.130 n fact, however, Thomas makes the case thatbelief in the crucifixion was widespread. In his description of a visit to the murderscene, he states that he knew on the basis of common report (ut fama traditur)the structure of beam and posts that the Jews supposedly employed in place of a

129 Word of the confrontations in Wiirzburg would have come to Regensburg with the crusadingarmy, and Gerhoh of Reichersberg roundly denounced the belief in Theodoric's sanctity and miracles,De investigatione Antichristi 1.66, MGH Ldl 3:383.

130 Langmuir, "Thomas of Monmouth," pp. 840-42.

732




cross. Then in a later reference to the same visit, he specifies that the Christianserving maid had pointed out the traces of William's martyrdom on the posts.131But the maid was not his only witness. The monks who prepared the corpse for

burial in their cemetery inspected it closely. They discovered the puncture woundsin William's scalp with pieces of thorn that they pulled out and preserved. Theyalso found signs of his suffering in his hands, feet, and side.132 The likelihood thatthe men who washed the body misinterpreted what they saw is very great. Thecorpse had lain exposed for several days, and it had been interred for a month.Nevertheless, the monks interpreted what they saw as evidence for the kinds oftortures that Thomas describes. Moreover, they certainly related their observationsto their confreres, and some of these witnesses-direct or indirect-must havebeen available to inform and correct Thomas when he committed his account towriting at least five years later.

Given the situation in Norwich in 1144, the crucifixion libel probably began asa rumor rather than as a conscious creation. The basic elements of the case areclear. Citizens discovered the mutilated body of a child on the day before Easter,and shortly thereafter the Jews were accused of the crime. Once those two strandsof the story became intertwined in the public mind, the thought of a crucifixioncould easily have occurred to many Christians. Even the initial suspicion of theJews might have arisen from the at least approximate coincidence of the crimewith the commemoration of Christ's passion,133 nd Thomas suggests that the verybrutality of the murder led to widespread speculation that the Jews were respon-sible.134 But when he moves from generalities to specifics, when he begins to iden-tify the people who first cast suspicion upon the Jews, all of the individuals he

mentions are members of the victim's family.William's uncle, the priest Godwin Sturt, accused the Jews of his nephew's mur-der at a diocesan synod held about two weeks after Easter, and the public natureof this assembly offers some assurance that Thomas's account has a historicalbasis. Thomas also refers to other incidents, which had supposedly occurred ear-lier, that pointed to Jewish guilt, but these anecdotes are of the sort that mighthave been added later to a developing legend. In any case, they all emphasize therole of William's close relatives in directing attention to the Jews. While Williamwas a skinner's apprentice, Godwin was one of two men who warned him to limithis association with Jewish customers.135 On the day William went off with the"cook," Godwin's wife Leviva sent their young daughter to follow the pair, and

131 Life 1.5, pp. 21-22; 2.9, p. 91.132 Life 1.18, pp. 52-53.133 By another coincidence, he day William's body was discovered was not only the Saturday e-

tween Good Friday and Easter Sunday. n 1144, that Saturday ell on 25 March, he date regarded sthe actual anniversary f Christ's eath. The nineteen exts in Wormald's enedictine Kalendars fterA.D. 1100 (see above, n. 65) provide only two examples of the Crucifixio Domini on this date (1:53,70), but the Annunciation, elebrated n the same day, is universal. Almost as common as the An-nunciation s the commemoration f the Resurrection, which appears on 27 March n seventeen ofthe calendars. Similarly, hree of the four Norwich calendars hat Cockerell onsiders place the Re-surreccio domini prima on that date: Two East Anglian Psalters see above, n. 69), p. 6.

134

Life1.11,

p.35; 1.12,

p.36.

135 Life 1.3, p. 6.

733




the girl saw them enter a Jew's house.136 Then, as soon as Godwin reported to herthat he had identified William's body, Leviva remembered an ominous dream inwhich Jews had torn off her leg.137 Shortly thereafter, when William's motherlearned of his death, she began publicly to bewail her loss, denouncing the Jewsin her lamentations.138 Finally, Thomas reports that within days of William's deaththe Jews sought to mitigate their problems by offering a bribe to the victim'sbrother Robert, "to whom the business of the accusation was chiefly entrusted."139Following Godwin's accusation in the synod and the Jews' refusal to answer thecharge, anti-Jewish sentiment quickly spread far beyond William's immediate fam-ily, and it became so intense that the Jews had to seek refuge with the sheriff inthe royal castle. In the beginning, however, William's relatives, apparently underthe leadership of Godwin Sturt, led the way in accusing the Jews in the boy'sdeath.

A further indication that Godwin planned and orchestrated a campaign to laythe blame for William's death upon the Jews is his action in opening the child'sgrave in Thorpe Wood. This interment was obviously temporary, and canon lawspecified that the dead should be laid to rest in their home parishes.140 Yet Godwindid not exhume his nephew's corpse and take it away for a proper burial. Instead,he dug down to the level of the body, laid bare the face to establish the child'sidentity, and-apparently after performing some minimal obsequies-reclosedthe grave. Thereafter Godwin appeared before the synod, charging the Jews in

William's death.Thomas reports the accusation in the form of a speech that he attributes toGodwin.141 In this address the priest states that he wishes to speak, not about aprivate injury, but about "an outrage which has been done to the whole Christiancommunity," and he declares that the Jews, "the enemies of the Christian name,"are guilty in the death of his nephew. By way of proof he states, "And that thefacts are so you yourselves can judge, as well from the practices which the Jewsare bound to carry out on the days specified, as from the manner of the punishmentinflicted and the character of the wounds and the many confirmations of circum-stances which agree together." Thereafter he cites the evidence of his wife's visionand William's mother's charge. Clearly, we cannot accept this reported speech as

a transcript of Godwin's presentation, nor do we need to believe that he referredspecifically to a Jewish ritual associated with the Easter season. We can be sure,however, that his accusation contained some religious or ecclesiastical element.

In twelfth-century England the Jews as a group were directly subject to theking.142 Nevertheless, Godwin must in fact have raised the possibility that the Jewshad not only committed murder but insulted the Christian religion, for subsequent

136 Life 1.5, p. 19.137 Life 1.14, pp. 40-41.138 Life 1.15, pp. 41-42.139 Life 2.10, pp. 91-92.140 Council of Westminster, 1102, in Councils and Synods (see above, n. 119), 1/2:678, 681.141 Thomas presents his account of the synod and its immediate aftermath in Life 1.16, pp. 43-49,

where Godwin's speech appears on pp. 43-45.142 Thomas has a Jew address the king with the words, "Nos iudei tui sumus," Life 2.14, p. 100.

734




events demonstrate that Bishop Everard and the synod believed they had somejurisdiction in the matter. The bishop summoned the Jews to appear before theassembly. They sought help from the sheriff, who could be expected to defend the

king's jurisdiction in such a case, and on his advice they refused to appear. IndeedSheriff John informed the bishop "that he had nothing to do with the Jews, andthat in the absence of the King the Jews should make no answer to such inventionsof the Christians." Bishop Everard consulted with certain learned men attendinghis synod-Thomas mentions specifically Aimar, Cluniac prior of St. Pancras atLewes in Sussex-who urged him to stand firm: "They declared unanimously thata manifest outrage was being done to God and Christian law, and they advisedthat it should be straightway vindicated with rigorous Ecclesiastical justice." Aftera second and third summons proved no more fruitful than the first and the synodwas at an end, the bishop called on the Jews once more, threatening a peremptorysentence if they did not heed his demand. Thereupon the Jews came before thebishop, accompanied by the sheriff. Godwin insisted that the question of theirguilt should be settled by an ordeal, a characteristically Christian mode of proof,and the Jews asked for a delay.143 Godwin refused, and the Jews left with thesheriff, taking refuge in the royal castle until the king issued an edict guaranteeingtheir safety.144

At this point, Bishop Everard allowed the matter to drop, fearing, as Thomassays, "openly to oppose the king and his officers." In a case of this sort the kingcertainly had traditional rights of jurisdiction on his side. Equally important, how-ever, the actions of the synod and bishop demonstrate their conviction that someaspect of the crime fell within ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and that could only havebeen the case if Godwin Sturt had accused the

Jewsof some crime

againstChris-

tianity. We can never know for certain whether he actually charged them withperforming nefarious rites, but his accusation surely opened the way to the im-putation of ritual murder.

Thomas hints that William's family also intended in the beginning to bringcharges in a royal court,145 nd several years later Bishop William Turbe told KingStephen that Godwin was still prepared to present his case,146 but the king post-poned the hearing indefinitely. In the longer term, however, William's kin benefitedfrom his growing fame. His brother Robert became a monk in the cathedral priory,

143 Jews had commonly been exempted from ordeals since the Carolingian age: Moore, PersecutingSociety (see above, n. 7), p. 127 n; Stow, Alienated Minority (see above, n. 7), p. 60.

144 Life 1.16, pp. 46-48. Thomas refers again later (Life 2.11, p. 95) to the protection the Jewsenjoyed as a result of this edicturn, which suggests that Stephen did issue some document, presumablyin the form of a writ.

145 Thomas provides no details of any charges except those leveled by Godwin, but he does say thatwithin days of the murder William's brother Robert had primary responsibility for accusing the Jews(see p. 734, above). Most likely Robert was designated to bring charges for murder, concealed homi-cide, against the Jews in a royal court. Only a male related by blood to the victim could present sucha charge, and Robert was William's closest living kinsman. See Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibusregni Anglie qui Glanvilla vocatur, ed. and trans. G. D. G. Hall (London, 1965), pp. 174-75;FrederickPollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I,2nd ed. (Cambridge, Eng., 1899), 2:486.

146 Life 2.14, p. 107.

735



736 Jewish Ritual Murder

and his mother Elviva came to be closely associated with the convent as well.147For his part, Godwin turned his nephew's celebrity as a thaumaturge into a sourceof personal income. Thomas reports that, having obtained the teasel with whichthe child had been gagged, the priest used it to perform cures and charged for theservice. 148

These advantages that William's family enjoyed were certainly real, but they allderived from the belief that he was-or at least might be-a saint, and Thomasoffers no indication that Godwin made any such claim in the beginning. As apriest Godwin would have been aware that William's youth, his lack of a con-spicuously holy life, and even his social and economic status would make him anunlikely candidate for sanctity. Indeed, Thomas reports that William's criticsraised these very objections.149 nstead, Thomas gives credit for recognizing thepotential value of William's body as a relic to a cleric from another diocese, Aimar,the prior of St. Pancras, who attended the Easter synod.150 Thomas states thatAimar closely queried a priest about the circumstances of the boy's death and thenasked for permission to bury the body in his own church. This expression ofinterest from an outsider encouraged Bishop Everard to translate the corpse tothe monks' cemetery. The unnamed priest who told Aimar of the child's woundscould have been Godwin, but he need not have been. Moreover, Aimar wouldhave been alert to the appeal of boy martyrs as Pancratius, the patron of his ownmonastery, was venerated as a youthful victim of Roman persecution.151

Godwin'sgoals

wereprobably

moreexplicitly

materialistic. Thomasdepicts

theJews of Norwich as wealthy moneylenders who could afford fine clothes andhandsome bribes,152 nd this association of Jews with finance was widespread in

147 Thomas dentifies Robert as a monk, Life 2.10, p. 91. Elviva was one of Thomas's nformants.She also helped ecure a cross for her son's irst omb n the church, and the monks buried her n theircemetery, .21, pp. 213-16.

148 Life 5.5, pp. 192-93, where Thomas describes William's unishment f his uncle's reed. At 4.8,p. 173, William appears o a man, offering o assist him in return or two candles made by Godwin.Whether Godwin's xploitation of his nephew's enown normally ncluded he manufacture f votiveobjects s unattested.

149

Thomas mentions all of these points n Life 2.8, pp. 85-88. On the lack of evidence or a holylife, see also 2.1, pp. 60-61; and 2.2, p. 64. On the matter of social class, Andr6 Vauchez notes thatnon-nobles became common among lay saints in Italy during he twelfth century but not until thethirteenth n the north: "Lay People's Sanctity n Western Europe: Evolution f a Pattern Twelfth ndThirteenth Centuries)," n Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski nd Timea Szell, eds., Images of Sainthood nMedieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991), pp. 26-27. On the general predominance f the upper-classsaints, see Alexander Murray, Reason and Society n the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), pp. 337-41,405-12; and Donald Weinstein nd Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds f WesternChristendom, 000-1700 (Chicago, 1982), pp. 194-219.

150 Life 1.17, pp. 49-50. On Aimar, ee Knowles et al., Heads of Religious Houses (see above, n.41), p. 119.

151 Pancras's ult was widespread n England: D. H. Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 3rded. (Oxford, 1992), p. 377; and Thomas mentions him among he child martyrs with whom he com-

pares William, Life 2.8, p. 87.152 As a skinner's apprentice, William worked on fur garments that Jews owned or had taken in

pawn, Life 1.3, p. 15. Eleazar of Norwich, "the richest Jew of them all," was murdered by the retainersof a knight who owed him money, 2.13, pp. 97-99. Thomas speaks of bribes accepted or merelyoffered at 1.8, pp. 28-29; 2.10, pp. 91, 92-93; 2.14, p. 110.




his day.153 Godwin may well have sought to turn a family tragedy-the murderof a child by an unknown sadist-into a financial windfall, accusing the Jews ofthe crime in the hope of gaining compensation or at least a substantial bribe to

drop the charge.Moreover, it is not surprising that Godwin's accusation should have struck a

responsive chord. The Jews were a new element in the society of Norwich, prob-ably settling in the city within the decade preceding William's death,154 and anunsavory reputation certainly preceded them. Their association with finance con-tributed to their unpopularity, but that was by no means the only factor. All Chris-tians knew them as the villains of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' execution, andgrowing evidence suggests that Christians saw the celebration of Purim as anoffense against their beliefs. This festival, which often falls in Lent or even in theEaster season, commemorates the events related in the Book of Esther in whichQueen Esther and her uncle Mordecai rescued the Jews of the Persian empire fromthe threat of a massacre planned by Haman, the king's favorite. Characterized bya carnival spirit that encouraged role reversal and defiance of authority, the cele-bration culminated with the destruction of an image of Haman, which wasmocked, hung from a gibbet-sometimes in the form of a cross-and burned.155No medieval account explicitly links the Purim celebration with ritual murder,156but the festival did involve the reenactment of the execution of an enemy of theJewish people. Not surprisingly, Christians regarded it as a mockery of the cru-cifixion, and Thomas of Monmouth described William's death in the sameterms.157

In this context, special importance attaches to the fact that Jews were also re-

153 Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.,1978), pp. 42-46, offers a brief summary.

154 Thomas's Life constitutes the earliest evidence for the existence of a Jewish community in Nor-wich. Kevin T. Streit, "The Expansion of the English Jewish Community in the Reign of King Stephen,"Albion 25 (1993), 177-92, regards the Norwich settlement as still relatively "new" in 1159, p. 189.See also Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich (see above, n. 62), p. 4.

155 The classic formulation of the view that these rituals contributed to the ritual murder charge isCecil Roth, "The Feast of Purim and the Origins of the Blood Accusation," Speculum 8 (1933), 520-26. Langmuir reviews the development of this idea and disputes its validity in "Historiographic Cru-cifixion" (see above, n. 8), pp. 119-21. Recent studies reemphasize the role of Jewish rituals in shapingChristian attitudes toward Jews, including the ritual murder accusation. Yuval, "Vengeance and Dam-nation" (see above, n. 5), considers rituals associated with Yom Kippur and Passover as well as Purim,but other scholars emphasize Purim: Gerd Mentgen, "The Origins of the Blood Libel" (in Hebrew),Zion 59 (1994), 343-49 (English summary, p. xvii); idem, "Uber den Ursprung der Ritualmordfabel,"Aschkenas 4 (1994), 405-16; Elliott Horowitz, "'And It Was Reversed': Jews and Their Enemies inthe Festivities of Purim" (in Hebrew), Zion 59 (1994), 129-68 (English summary, pp. x-xi); and idem,"The Rite to Be Reckless: On the Perpetration and Interpretation of Purim Violence," Poetics Today15 (1994), 9-54.

156 Langmuir, "Historiographic Crucifixion" (see above, n. 8), p. 121. However, according toThomas, the convert Theobald stressed that Norwich had been chosen by lot as the site of the annualhuman sacrifice (see above, p. 703), and purim is the feast of lots, so called because Haman used themto determine the day for his intended slaughter. The text of the Vulgate Bible emphasizes the equiva-lence of purim and sortes and identifies the festival as dies sortium, Esther 9.24, 26, 28, 31.

157 Statements that William died in dominicepassionis obprobrium

or other similar formulationsappear repeatedly in Thomas's Life, e.g., 1.3, p. 15; 1.5, p. 21; 1.17, p. 49; 2.4, pp. 69-70; 2.5, p. 77.

737



puted to be child killers. Clear evidence of this belief survives in the form of astory that circulated in the West from the sixth century onward. The tale tells ofa Jewish boy who took communion on Easter with his Christian companions andthen revealed the deed to his parents. Overcome with rage, his father heated afurnace and sealed him inside, but his mother sought help from neighboring Chris-tians. When they broke open the oven, they found the boy unharmed, and herevealed that he had been protected by the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Thisstory gained currency in the high Middle Ages with the growing popularity of themiracles of the Virgin, but of particular interest for William's case is its appearancein a sermon for Christmas day by Herbert Losinga, the first bishop of Norwich.158Herbert expressed similarly negative opinions of the Jews in his sermon for PalmSunday. There he referred to their malice and murderous intent toward Jesus aswell as to their perfidy, concluding that Christ "humbled himself before the Jewsso that he might be crucified by those same Jews."159 n the context of the earlytwelfth century, these views do not represent extraordinary animosity toward theJews. Nevertheless, their expression by the pastor of the church of Norwich makesclear why members of both clergy and laity might give heed to a priest whocharged the Jews with a heinous crime.

Contemporary scholarship has also demonstrated that for Christians of thetwelfth century, at least on the Continent, ideas familiar from ancient legend foundconfirmation in recent events. In 1096 the crusaders invaded Jewish communities,

offering their victims conversion or death. But in many cases the trapped Jewschose an alternative their persecutors had not foreseen. In a ceremonious displayfor their Christian attackers, mothers slaughtered their children, husbands killedtheir wives, and then rabbis slew the other men, one another, and finally them-selves. That such scenes would not have influenced Christian perceptions of Jewsand Judaism seems inconceivable. But historians have generally held that medievalChristians remained largely ignorant of these events.160 Only quite recently havescholars begun to recognize that the Christian majority was well aware of Jewishmartyrdom, and this awareness confirmed existing conceptions of Jewish obsti-nacy and cruelty.161 Clearly, then, by the 1140s the popular preconceptions char-acteristic of Western Christendom in general and of Norwich in particular had

158 A recent examination of this exemplum places it in the broader ontext of Christian erceptionsof Jewish cruelty: Mary Minty, "Kiddush a-Shem n German Christian Eyes n the Middle Ages" inHebrew), Zion 59 (1994), 209-66 (English ummary, p. xii-xiv), esp. pp. 239-47 (p. xiii). On thewide distribution f the story and Herbert's se of it, see also James W. Alexander, Herbert f Nor-wich, 1091-1119: Studies n the History of Norman England," tudies n Medieval nd RenaissanceHistory 6 (1969), 193-94. Herbert's ermon s edited and translated n Edward Meyrick Goulburnand Henry Symonds, The Life, Letters, nd Sermons f Bishop Herbert de Losinga, 2 (Oxford, 1878),where he story appears n pp. 30-33.

159 Ibid., pp. 114, 118, 120, "... quoniam humiliatus st ante iudeos. adeo ut ab eisdem udeiscrucifigeretur."

160 Chazan, European ewry and the First Crusade see above, n. 123), pp. 213-14.161 In addition o Yuval, "Vengeance nd Damnation" see above, n. 5), see Minty, "Kiddush a-

Shem" see above, n. 158). Minty's exposition of German Christian wareness f Jewish martyrdomeliminates one source of objections o Yuval's hesis that these actions lie at the base of the ritualmurder ccusation.

Jewish Ritual Murder38



prepared the way for Christians to accept and to act upon the belief that Jewswould sacrifice Christian children.

The extent to which the legend may have developed even before the Norwichincident remains

unknown,but the

precedingdiscussion has established some

grounds for speculation. Several characteristics of Thomas of Monmouth's nar-rative suggest that people in Norwich chose to explain a local event in terms of aparadigm of ritual murder that they already accepted as true. For the first exampleof an emerging literary genre, Thomas's Life of St. William is surprisingly finished.It describes the international "conspiracy" of the Jews and their purchase of thevictim, their mockery of Christ's passion in both the time and manner of themurder, their attempts to hide the corpse, and the divine revelation of its restingplace. In short, all of the elements of the fully developed ritual murder myth occurin the first recorded example.162 The second striking feature of Thomas's work isits isolation. Thomas had no identifiable literary models for a ritual murder nar-

rative. More important, his work did not serve as a pattern for others. The pub-lication of Thomas's composition was strictly limited, and the information aboutWilliam that spread beyond Norwich traveled independently of it. Thus the nu-merous parallels in ritual murder stories cannot be traced to Thomas's influence.Rather, it seems likely that Thomas and other early writers on this topic repre-sented views that circulated in the communities where putative ritual murders tookplace and that these views in turn were themselves based on a widespread popularbelief that Jews sacrificed Christian children. If this was the case, then William'smurder may have been seen less as a novelty than as concrete evidence in supportof the accepted belief that the Jews were accustomed to commit crimes againstChrist and his faithful.163

Reexamining he question f Thomas f Monmouth's ole n the creation f theritual murder myth n general nd he crucifixion opos n particular as aken usdown several aths, and on a number f points absolute roof remains lusive.Probability ay be the most that will ever be achieved. Yet n many cases heseprobabilities hallenge ccepted pinions. hereview f the date of Thomas's ifeand Passion of St. William offers evidence to support the conclusion that theauthor omposed he first ix books of his text in 1154-55. This constitutes ochange n the accepted ating of books 2-6, but it would mean hat Thomaswrote book 1 some five years ater han has generally een hought. Given he

problems nherent n dating medieval exts, an adjustment f half a decade susually minor. n this case, however, t justifies eopening he question f priorityin the ritual murder ccusation nd a review f the external vidence or knowl-edge of William's eath.

A survey of English ources ields ittle n the way of new data, although tconfirms hat the distribution f Thomas's ork was very imited. t also revealsthe existence f a tradition ndependent f Thomas hat placed William's eath

162 Lotter, "Innocens virgo et martyr" (see above, n. 8), p. 70, also lists the commonplaces of thegenre. Gilbert Dahan offers a somewhat different list in Les intellectuels chretiens et les juifs au mnoyenage (Paris, 1990), p. 25.

163 Cf. Life 1.16, p. 44; 2.8, p. 88.





on GoodFriday.

The earliestexplicit

reference to thatday appears

in theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the redating of Thomas's work makes it clear that the an-

nalistic entry is not merely a brief retelling of Thomas's story in which the authorgot the day wrong. Rather it is a contemporary witness to a separate tradition ofinformation about William, a tradition that included the element of crucifixionand circulated far more widely than Thomas's composition. The investigation ofContinental texts reveals evidence for knowledge of William and the manner ofhis death in sources that have escaped consideration by previous investigators.The notice in Paul of Bernried's martyrology confirms a breadth and rapidity ofdistribution of William's story about which earlier scholars could only speculate.Indeed, Paul's brief eulogy suggests that during the late 1140s William may ac-

tually have enjoyed more renown on the Continent than he did in England, forthese are the years that Thomas identifies as a period of quiescence in William'scult at Norwich. The vision story in the chronicle of Helinand of Froidmont offersa different kind of testimony. It appears in a text written a full half century afterThomas recorded visionary evidence for his saint's presence in heaven, but signifi-cant differences in detail indicate that Thomas's account incorporates only partof the information that circulated about William. In sum, not only did Thomaswrite later than previously thought, but information about William that was in-dependent of his composition traveled farther, faster, and in greater detail thanhitherto supposed.

Thomas's account of the events following William's murder makes it clear thatthe boy's relatives openly accused the Jews in his death and that Godwin Sturtmust have claimed a religious motive for the crime. Thereafter the conclusion thatWilliam had died by crucifixion must have seemed obvious to many who heardof the case. Ultimately, however, the significance of the crucifixion myth does notlie in its origin, for it could arise from the mind of a single person as the calculatedcreation of an evil individual or as the idle speculation of a misguided one. Ratherthe myth acquires its importance from its rapid acceptance by the Christian com-munity at large. Obviously, Europeans of the twelfth century were already pre-pared to believe that the Jews as a people were capable of extraordinary inhu-manity. Thomas of Monmouth accepted that view, and he offers us a unique

window onto a specific manifestation of it-the spreading myth of ritual murder.Thomas did not invent the myth, and his literary expression of it remained withoutinfluence. The value of his Life of St. William for understanding anti-Jewish at-titudes in the twelfth century is enormous. Yet the text remained virtually un-known outside of Norwich, and it is better seen as a manifestation of the ritualmurder libel than as the source of the tradition. Thomas of Monmouth certainlyreflects the anti-Jewish mentality of his age, but he made no significant contribu-tion to creating it.

John M. McCulloh is Professor of History at Kansas State University Manhattan KS

740