Folklore

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Towards a Revaluation of the Legend of Saint

William of Norwich and its Place in the Blood Libel
Legend

Gillian Bennett

To cite this article: Gillian Bennett (2005) Towards a Revaluation of the Legend of Saint
William of Norwich and its Place in the Blood Libel Legend, Folklore, 116:2, 119-139, DOI:
10.1080/00155870500140156

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00155870500140156

Published online: 19 Aug 2006.

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Folklore 116 (August 2005): 119139

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Towards a Revaluation of the Legend of Saint

William of Norwich and its Place in the Blood
Libel Legend
Gillian Bennett
Abstract
The legend of William of Norwich is extremely well known and often quoted in
discussions of defamatory folklore. However, since I started working on it three or
four years ago I have found that there are surprisingly few folkloric analyses.
Leaving aside those who have attempted to believe the story and to use it as anti-
Jewish propaganda, most of the respectable work has been done by historians and
has tended to concentrate either on debunking the legend or on attempting to
reconstruct events in Norwich during Easter 1144. My aim in this paper is to
redress this balance and tackle a couple of the more folkloric questions.

Introduction
A perennial theme in accusations brought against persecuted minorities is that
they indulge in disgusting secret rituals involving any or all of the following:
orgiastic sex, incest, baby-sacrifice, consumption of human flesh or blood, and
other breaches of bodily integrity such as the collection and use of stolen body-
parts or body-fluids. The documented history of such accusations can be traced
over the best part of 2,000 years. One strand of this larger tradition that has been
frequently studied by folklorists is the anti-Semitic blood libel legend, the
scurrilous accusation that Jews make use of the blood of Christians for purposes
of ritual (Strack 1909, vii). Although there were isolated instances of similar
accusations in antiquity, scholars usually see the case of Saint [1] William of
Norwich as leading to the establishment in Europe of the sort of continuing
folklore that makes the blood libel a legend rather than a series of related
rumours. This paper examines the legend of William, its context and its source, in
order to address two questions: Is there any essential difference between the
primary source and the legend we now know and, if so, what is its significance?
And, is it really the case that this is the first recognisable instance of the blood libel
legend? A third questionwere this and similar accusations responsible for the
persecution of Jews in England and their expulsion from the country at the end of
the thirteenth century?will be addressed more briefly in a subsequent note.
Let us begin by outlining the elements of the story that are generally accepted as
factual. [2] There was indeed a boy called William, an apprentice in the leather
industry aged twelve years, whose body was discovered in suspicious
circumstances in a wood on the outskirts of Norwich on or around Easter 1144.
His uncle, a priest, formally accused local Jews of murdering him. The Sheriff of
Norfolk, John de Chesney, supported the Jews and they took refuge for a while
ISSN 0015-587X print; 1469-8315 online/05/020119-21; Routledge Journals; Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
q 2005 The Folklore Society
DOI: 10.1080/00155870500140156
120 Gillian Bennett

in the castle. No charges were brought against them. Out of these events, or
something like them, arose a legend about a ritual crucifixion by Jews of a
Christian boy such as that first recorded in the final continuation of The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle written by the monks of Peterborough in 1155:
In [King Stephens] time, the Jews of Norwich bought [3] a Christian child before Easter and
tortured him with all the tortures that our Lord was tortured with, and on Good Friday hanged
him on a cross on account of our Lord, and then buried him. They expected it would be
concealed, but our Lord made it plain that he was a holy martyr, and the monks took him and
buried him with ceremony in the monastery, and through our Lord he works wonderful and
varied miracles, and he is called St William (Jacobs 1893, 19).

By the twentieth century the story had mutated to something much more familiar.
Here it is, for example, as repeated by the historian Cecil Roth in 1935:
On Easter Eve, 1144, the dead body of a young skinners apprentice, named William, was found
in Thorpe Wood near Norwich . . . It was bruited about . . . that in fact he was a victim of the
Jews, who had enticed him away from his family and crucified him, after synagogue service on
the second day of Passover, in mockery of the Passion of Jesus. In consequence, a wave of
religious frenzy swept the city. The body was buried with all solemnity at the cathedral, where
miracles were said to be wrought at the graveside. That the Jews escaped massacre was mainly
due to the cool-headedness of the sheriff, who permitted them to take refuge in the royal castle
and . . . refused to allow judicial proceedings to be opened against them (Roth 1935, 15).

In all probability the origin of the story is a seven-volume hagiographical work,

The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich (hereafter Life), by Thomas of
Monmouth, a Norwich monk. The only known copy of this work was discovered
by M. R. James in 1889. Together with Cannon Augustus Jessopp, James edited
and translated the work and published it in 1896 (Jessopp and James 1896).
Although Jessopp and James thought that the whole work had been written in
1172/3 (the date of the prologue), internal evidence shows that Book 1 was
probably written as early as 1149 or 1150, and Book 2 in 1154/55 (Langmuir 1991,
26 8). Book 1 therefore precedes the account in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Since it
is here that the basic story unfolds, I think we can accept it as the primary source.
Reading the Life is an astonishing, and not at all pleasant, experience. The tone
throughout is intemperate, full of a vicious anti-Semitism, shocking to modern
minds. In Thomass eyes, there is nothing that Jews will not stoop toreferences
to their wickedness occur on almost every line, and they are constantly referred to
as our enemies. Thomas alleges that the Jews of Norwich abducted the boy on
the Wednesday before Easter, and then on Maundy Thursday (which was also the
second day of Passover) after synagogue service they committed a wicked and
sadistic murder resembling a crucifixion. They decided to leave disposing of the
body until Good Friday, which would be a quiet day for the Christian majority,
and to get rid of it in a way that would implicate Christians. However, they were
interrupted by a prominent citizen, lward Ded, who accosted them in Thorpe
Wood on the other side of town. On the following day the body was discovered in
the wood but it was left unburied until Easter had been celebrated. Throughout
the Saturday and Sunday a sort of rumour-panic erupted and hordes of people
went out to see the body and exchange theories about the boys death. Suspicion
fell on the Jews, he says, since it was agreed that no Christian would do such
Saint William of Norwich 121

Figure 1. Panel from St Johns, Maddermarket, Norwich, after Jessopp and James, Plate IV.

a thing, and popular sentiment was stirred up to boiling point. There would have
been a lynching had not the people been afraid of the Sheriff.
The sequence of events in Thomass narrative gets a little cloudy from this point.
It appears that on the Monday following Easter Day, the Forester, Henry de
Sprowston, buried the body where he had found it; and on the Tuesday (certainly
no earlier) the boys uncle, the priest Godwin Sturt, dug it up to identify it, said
prayers over it, and reburied it where it lay. Some days later, the boys mother
heard the rumours and without delay hastened to Norwich to enquire into the
122 Gillian Bennett

truth of the matter. Her sister, Godwins wife, confirmed the rumours, and she
rushed round town screaming and calling for the destruction of the Jews. There
was some renewal of the excitement, but Thomas cannot disguise that there was
no attack on the Jewish quarter.
When some days had passed, says Thomas (it seems likely that something
like three weeks had actually gone by), Godwin used the Church synod, which
was meeting then in Norwich, to accuse the Jews of murdering his nephew,
claiming that it should be regarded as an outrage done to the whole Christian
community. The bishop, Eborard, presiding over the synod (seemingly a just and
cautious man), said that these things were so far clearly uncertain to us but
decided this was a matter that needed to be investigated. However, says Thomas,
the Sheriff conspired with the Jews to pervert the course of justice. Three times
Eborard invited the Jews to appear before him to clear their names and three
times, on the advice of the Sheriff, they declined. Only when they were threatened
with summary justice in their absence did the Sheriff allow them to appear before
the bishop. At that meeting, to which the Sheriff accompanied them, they were
challenged to undergo trial by ordeal. They refused, and the wicked sheriff
feloniously prevented justice being done by spiriting the Jews away to the castle.
Book 1 ends with Williams reburial in the monks cemetery thirty-two days after
his death.
Thomass colleagues were not sympathetic to this account, so Book 2 begins
with vitriolic abuse of these and other sceptics (Jessopp and James 1896, 57 62), a
description of some of the boys early miracles, and a marshalling of his witnesses
evidence (Jessopp and James 1896, 89 112). The remaining books of the Life
contain accounts of further miracles; Williams translation from the monks
cemetery, by stages and over several years, to the Martyrs Chapel in the
Cathedral; and the various miracles performed at each of these reburials.
A comparison of Thomass story and subsequent accounts shows several
anomalies. One of the immediately striking differences is in the timescale:
subsequent retellings have legend-ised the happenings by foreshortening time.
Events that Thomass narrative indicates took days, or weeks, or even years to
unroll are dramatically compressed in the legend into what seems like a twenty-
four-hour period. Especially significant is that a careful reading of Thomass
account shows that the people of Norwich did not attack the Jews either when the
boys body was discovered (although agitators called for action) or when his
mother discovered that her son had been murdered, and that the flight to the castle
did not happen until perhaps three weeks later and perhaps not for the reasons the
legend implies.
Two points of difference stand out for me personally. The first is that Thomass
account of the supposed martyrdom of William does not correspond either to the
usual Christian iconography of a crucifixion or to the scholarly concept of a blood
libel. The second is that Thomas presents the Sheriff as a villain whereas, of course,
the present-day legend presents him as a hero; and what is especially interesting
about this is that both these portrayals appear from the historical evidence to be
misrepresentations. In these instances we can see how legend has shaped
historyindeed, has become historyand conversely how even a little knowledge
of history reconfigures the legend and demands a re-interpretation.
Saint William of Norwich 123

Norwich and the Jews in the Mid-twelfth Century

I want to begin with a discussion of the role of the Sheriff, since this will allow
me to present some contextual information about the Jews of Norwich and the
city they lived in. The Sheriff does not have a part in the account from The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but he is crucial to Thomas of Monmouths story and to
the present-day legend as told by Cecil Roth. Imagine Roths story without the
Sheriff, without the sentence beginning That the Jews . . . It would never catch
on today. But with that sentence, it becomes a story for our times, which both
Jews and Christians can respond to. For Jews, it is a story of the religious and
ethnic Other who against all odds and expectations saves them from
destruction; for Christians, it is a story of the knight-in-shining-armour, the
gallant lone ranger who rides out single-handed to bring truth and justice to the
marginalised and persecuted.
But was it really like that?
We are perhaps too apt to see the Norwich case as an isolated aberration in
an otherwise civilised country. But rid yourself about ideas of Merrie
England, the England in which these incidents took place was far from merry.
The Jews were living in a dangerous country in troubled times. First one has to
remember that England was then effectively a country under foreign
domination. William Duke of Normandy had invaded eighty years previously,
and by the mid-twelfth century Norman rule was firmly established, all or
almost all positions of wealth and power being in Norman hands. The
immediate backdrop to the accusations at Norwich was decades of anarchy and
a twelve-year civil war triggered by a succession dispute. During the two
hundred or so years that Jews lived there and elsewhere in England (i.e.
1066 290), there were wars abroad, rebellions and power struggles at home,
murders in high places, the conquest of Wales and a failed attempt to annex
Scotland, crusades to the Middle East and an unusually high number of
despotic, incompetent or absentee monarchs. Lawlessness and ruffianism were
the order of the day: Everyone . . . took it for granted that everyone else was
inclined to violence, fraud, or enormous wickedness, and sure to commit
these things if the chance of detection were reduced to a minimum (Jessopp
1896a, xxxviii).
However, East Anglia was for the most part a settled region, and a populous
and prosperous one too, largely owing to the efforts of the Kings viceroy in the
area, John de Chesney, Sheriff of Norfolk. Norwich was the third wealthiest city in
England and a provincial capital. Its importance had been enhanced by the
building of a castle and a cathedral with a Benedictine Priory attached to it. [4] The
population was probably in the region of five thousand to ten thousand people.
These were divided between English (of Anglo-Saxon and Danish stock) and
Norman-French. There were also about two hundred Jews in the city, [5] the
largest community outside London.
It is not clear what their relations with the rest of the towns-people were. In
his The English Jewry under Angevin Kings, H. G. Richardson argues that relations
would have had to be good in order for them to pursue their calling . . . with
any success (Richardson 1960, 27). But others have disagreed. In his The Jews
124 Gillian Bennett

of Medieval Norwich, V. D. Lipman says relations were never good (Lipman

1967, 49); and Augustus Jessopp goes so far as to say that in England at the
time there was intense and increasingly bitter feeling against the Jewish
communities because of their special and, as some saw it, privileged position
(Jessopp 1896b, xl).
The political status of Jews is crucial to understanding some of the
events and being able to critique Thomass narrative. The consensus is that the
Conqueror had brought the Jewish settlers to England from France to bankroll
his extensive building projects. Jews were essential as financiers in medieval
Europe because they were the only capitalists who could be applied to in
order to fund large-scale building works and commercial schemes, since
Christian doctrine as interpreted by the Catholic Church banned the charging
of interest (Jacobs 1893, vix; Jessopp 1896b, xl). For King Stephen, as for his
grandfather the Conqueror, Jews were privileged and courted guests.
They were not members of the state [6]; they belonged to the King and
were protected by him; they were exempt from taxes, tolls and fines. Jews
were the kings chattel[s] not to be meddled with for good or ill save at the
Kings bidding. Jewish wealth might be seized at any moment by an
arbitrary act of the king, but . . . the kings protection guarded [it] with jealous
care against all other interference (Jessopp 1896b, xli, quoting Norgate 1887,
vol. 1, 53). [7] The Jews of London had been settled on the edge of the city as
a privileged community of financiers, and most scholars agree that this was
also likely to have been the position at Norwich too. [8] That is one layer of
privilege and special status. Another layer is that the Jews were almost
certainly Norman-French themselves, being offshoots of the London
community, which in turn had been an offshoot of one established at Rouen
at the beginning of the eleventh century (Richardson 1960, 9). Even if they
were not Norman themselves, they were entirely bound up with the
Norman burgesses and as closely as possible connected to the castle
(Hudson 1896, xlvii).
There is a third layer of privilege and political complexity, which the Revd
W. Hudson attempts to unravel in his contribution to the Introduction to the
edited Life. In the early twelfth century, he says, Norwich was probably in
effect two cities in one, a large area to the west of the city having been granted
to the king for the formation of a new burgh. The new or French burgh
had separate markets and a rival municipal organisation. More importantly, it
had a separate jurisdiction; its citizens were answerable only to the King and
his viceroy, and could not be prosecuted in the old burgh or for any offence
committed there. By the early thirteenth century, however, the two burghs had
been fused into one. Using what records exist, Hudson concludes that this
fusion had not taken place by 1144, so at that time the town was still divided
into two distinct and alien organisations, the Norman burgesses in the new
burgh, the English in the old (Hudson 1896, xlvii). Most scholars agree that
the Jews were tenants in a block of streets directly adjacent to the Western gate
of the castle in what was then the new or French burgh. For three inter-
related reasons, therefore, the Jews of Norwich were set apartby their
connectedness to the Norman elite, by their special royal status, and by their
location in the city-within-a-city. For all these reasons, they were not
Saint William of Norwich 125

answerable to the towns-people in the old or English burgh, and they were
certainly not answerable to the ecclesiastical authority, especially since, as
Jessopp says:
The attempt on the part of the clergy and the bishop to make Jews answer to a capital charge
before the synod was manifestly an attempt to exercise jurisdiction over the kings men
(Jessopp 1896b, xlii iii).

Figure 2. Diagrammatic map of the city of Norwich in the mid-twelfth century, based on Hudson (1896).
126 Gillian Bennett

Thomass description of the war of words between the Sheriff and the bishop
illustrates this admirably, showing as it does the struggle between Bishop and
Sheriff to establish themselves as arbiters of legal matters. It is also entertaining,
because it reveals the very different personalities of the two contenders, and the
way the brusque action-man outwits the cautious cleric. It is a bit too long to quote
in full, but some extracts from Jessopp and Jamess translation of Thomass Life of
William will show the flavour of this battle:
The Jews were greatly disturbed [by Eborards request that they should appear before the
synod] and ran to the Sheriff John . . . seeking help and counsel . . . So John . . . did not allow the
Jews to come to the Synod on the morrow, and indeed he gave notice by his servants to the
Bishop that he [i.e. the bishop] had nothing to do with Jews, and that in the absence of the King
the Jews should make no answer to such inventions of the Christians. But the bishop having
received this message . . . enquired of Dom. Aimar, Prior of St Pancras, and other very learned
and prudent men who happened to be then present at that Synod, what answer they thought
had to be given. They declared unanimously that a manifest outrage was being done to GOD
and Christian law, and they advised that it should straightaway be vindicated with rigorous
Ecclesiastical justice . . . However, the bishop, not wishing to appear hasty . . . decided that the
aforesaid enemies of Christ should be summoned a second and a third time . . . But when the
Jews refused to appear . . . when the synod had come to an end, [Eborard] consulted with the
wisest men as to what was to be done under the circumstances. Accordingly it was determined
by common consent that notice should be given to John that he should not protect the Jews
against GOD, and to the Jews that preremptory sentence would be passed on them, and that
unless they at once purged themselves they must understand that without doubt they would be
exterminated.
This was surely an empty threat. Nevertheless, the Sheriff must have been rattled
because we hear that: John . . . came without delay, and the Jews with him,
intending to hear what could be said against them, and presented himself before
the bishop in some dudgeon (Jessopp and James 1896, 46 7). Godwin repeated
his charge and challenged the Jews to the Judgment of GOD (i.e. trial by ordeal).
The Jews denied the charge and asked for a delay to decide whether they would
accept Godwins challenge. The delay was refused. As a compromise, on Johns
advice, they agreed to undergo the ordeal at a later date, hoping, as Thomas puts
it, that they could easily extort from the King the favour which might be bought
for money; that is, bribe him to give them a reprieve. This was also
preremptorily denied. At that, the Sheriff with the Jews, without asking
leave to depart as the usual custom is, went their way.
This bit of the story concludes as follows, and we learn how and why Sheriff
John took the Jews into the castle, and what happened next:
But because it was not safe for them to remain outside, the Sheriff protected them within the
defences of the castle until, their security having been assured them by a royal edict, they might
be safe for the future and out of harms way. When it was told so to the bishop and his
supporters that they had gone away, inasmuch as they feared openly to oppose the King and his
officers, the Bishop said nothing for the time . . . (Jessopp and James 1896, 48 9).
There are several things that the historical context and this account make clear.
First, the legend encourages one to imagine that the Jews were escorted under
armed guard, and in great and immediate danger, into the castle keep, where the
gates were locked behind them to protect them from a lynch mob. But it cannot
Saint William of Norwich 127

have been like that. Firstly, Thomass affronted remark that the Sheriff and the
Jews went away without asking leave to depart as the usual custom is makes it plain
that they left the meeting before anybody was aware that they had gone. Secondly,
as Figure 2 shows, apart from the main entrance to the castle on the south-eastern
side, there were two further entrances. One was to the north-east only a short step
from the monastic precincts, and one was to the west at the edge of the Jewish
quarter. The Jews did not need to be in the castle keep to be safeneither bishop
nor mob, presuming there was one, could pursue them onto Royal land; they
would be secure anywhere within the castle grounds, which were considerable.
They would have been inside the north-eastern gate and safe from harm before
anybody could stop them (this is why Thomas is so outraged). The map also
shows that anyone left at home would have had no trouble gaining the sanctuary
of the castle lands either, since the western gate could have been simply opened to
let them through. It is extremely unlikely that a lynch mob could have constituted
a serious threat either to those who attended the meeting or to those who stayed at
home. However, there is no evidence at all in Thomass account that there was any
popular disturbance following the Jews departure from the meeting with the
bishop. After describing the battle of words between John and Eborard, Thomas
goes straight on to speak of the bid that Prior Aimar made for Williams body and
the counter-move Eborard made by reburying the body in the monks cemetery of
his own establishment. No mention whatsoever is made of any popular outcry. We
can therefore deduce that there was no outcry, and that it was further action by
Eborard and his supporters that the Sheriff was protecting the Jews from, not a
lynch-mob. That puts a very different complexion on the event; this battle was
between the Sheriff and the Bishop, not between the Jews and the Christian people
of Norwich.
Furthermore, John de Chesney was stating no more than a fact when he
advised the Jews that Eborard had no authority to call them to defend
themselves. And he was doing no more than his duty when he accompanied
them to the eventual hearing and subsequently put them out of harms way in
the castle precincts until the judgement of the King had been sought. John de
Chesney seems to have been an estimable man, one of the few of Stephens
viceroys who actually brought peace and justice to the regions they were
supposed to manage on the Kings behalf. Nevertheless, he was not the hero
that our familiar legend portrays. He was simply a man doing his duty
(although he did it with some style).
Finally, we should ask ourselves how far the legend loses even more of its epic
cast once not only the role of the Sheriff, but also the relationship between the
accusers and the accused are reconsidered. At that time Norwich was a city
divided by conflicting loyalties and ethnicitiesthe Church versus the King,
established families versus incomers, English against Frenchthe two groups
living separately but in close proximity. It is a classic recipe for tension and
suspicion. It could be that the murder accusation arose in part or whole out of a
long-running resentment against the Norman population of the new burgh, and
was focusedas so oftenon the most recent, most foreign, and apparently
most privileged arrivals. So the situation is much less clear-cut than the legend
leads us to believe. In short, once the probable historical context is added, it is
128 Gillian Bennett

plain to see that the legend has transformed the meaning of the events and
rewritten history.

The Death of William

Thomas himself was not above trying to change the meaning of events and rewrite
history. In fact, his account is often a blatant attempt to do just that. At all times, he
writes as if he was an eye-witness and privy to the thoughts of both the accused
and the accusers. However, this could not have been the case since he does not
appear to have arrived in Norwich until 1146 or maybe even later. [9] The way
Thomas shapes the available evidence to create his preferred interpretation of
events would make a good case study of how testimony can be twisted. It also
should give pause to subsequent scholars who have tried to interpret his story
as the first instance of a blood libel or an accusation of Jewish ritual murder.

Figure 3. Martyrdom of William as represented on a screen in Loddon Church, Norfolk, after Jacobs (1893).
Saint William of Norwich 129

There can be no doubt that Thomas desperately wanted William to be a victim of

the local Jews, and to have been crucified at Easter. As Cecil Roth reflects, a child
martyr was quite a good catch for a cathedral, but a child who had been crucified
at Easter was an especially useful commodity, since Something of the divinity of
Jesus himself descended upon the innocent boy . . . (Roth 1941, 269). If Thomas
could persuade people that this is what had actually happened, the boy would be
hailed as a saint, a stream of pilgrims would want to visit his shrine and would
leave offerings, and Thomas himself would gain income and prestige as the saints
sacristan (see Finucane 1977, 25 30, 120 and 161 2; Lipman 1967, 33 5 [10]).
However, the death that Thomass story describes does not really fit the bill, since
it is not recognisably a crucifixion and does not correspond to the usual
iconography.
In fact, this part of Thomass story is very curious indeed. According to Thomas,
the Jews begin by tying William to a post. He does not consistently say this is a
cross; at other times he refers to the marks of martyrdom visible on the timbers
of the house, and what he actually describes is three posts with a crosspiece. He
says that William is tied against the central post with his left hand and foot nailed
to the left-hand post and his right hand and foot bound to the right-hand post (see
Figure 3). The tortures that follow include strapping what Thomas calls a teazle
into Williams mouth as a gag to choke him (presumably the large prickly seed-
heads of teasels, Dipsacus fulonnum, that were used in the fulling of cloth). Then
they bound knotted cords tightly around his head and forehead and under his
chin so that the knots pressed on his temples, the centre of his forehead and his
throat. His tormenters then shaved his head and pressed thorns into it. The
proceedings ended with a vicious stab wound to the left side that penetrated the
heart. Then: since many streams of blood were running down from all parts of his
body . . . to stop the blood and to wash and close the wounds, they poured boiling
water over him (Jessopp and James 1896, 22). A very strange sort of crucifixion
and an even stranger blood ritual!
Looking at this account with hindsight, and in light of the claims folklorists have
made about its place in the blood libel legend, there are remarkable omissions.
First of all, Thomass story is nothing like a blood libel as properly defined since,
rather than draining the body of blood, these Jews try to staunch the flow; and,
although Thomas depicts them as rioting in the spirit of malignity around the
boy, there is not even a hint of a stereotypical cannibalistic feast. The second
omission is that, although the account is saturated with Christian imagery,
although the boy is frequently called a lamb, and although Thomas at times
alleges that the deed was done in mockery of the death of Jesus, he never claims
that the crime was a sacrifice. Thirdly, although he is aware that the crime was
committed during Passover (and maybe he has an inkling that this may be made
to be significant in some way), he does not attempt to make anything of it.
Fourthly, he does not claim that the torture and murder were committed as part of
a ritual. What he depicts is a sadistic orgy motivated by blood-lust, resentment
and malice, with a crucifixion tacked on as an afterthought. He says that while
they were all rioting in the spirit of malignity around the boy, some of those
present encouraged the others to string him up in mockery of the Lords
passion, as though they would say, Even as we condemned the Christ to a
shameful death, so let us also condemn the Christian, so that, uniting the Lord and
130 Gillian Bennett

the servant, in a like punishment we may retort upon themselves the pain of that
reproach which they impute to us (Jessopp and James 1896, 21). So the
crucifixion is not premeditated, there has been no prior universal agreement
about the purpose of the proceedings, and there is no suggestion of a ritual; it is a
spur-of-the-moment thing inspired by a desire to give Christians a taste of their
own medicine. [11]
In fact, there are only two occasions throughout the Life when Thomas tries to
link child murder/crucifixion with Jewish ritual practice. The first is when he
reports the accusation that Godwin Sturt brings to the meeting of the church
synod. As Thomas reports it, Godwin speaks about wounds, punishment,
and practices which the Jews are bound to carry out on the days specified. But
this claim forms only one sentence in quite a long peroration and is given only as
one indication among several that the Jews must be responsible for the boys
murder (Jessopp and James 1896, 43 5). A more blatant accusation of a Jewish
ritual killing may be found in Book 2 of Life. It is put in the mouth of a monk,
Theobald of Cambridge, who Thomas says was a Jewish convert to Christianity.
Theobald is reported to have told Thomas that in the ancient writings of his
fathers it was written that the Jews without the shedding of human blood, could
never obtain their freedom, nor could they ever return to their fatherland. Hence it
was laid down . . . that every year they must sacrifice a Christian . . . to the Most
High God in scorn and contempt so they might avenge their sufferings on them
(Jessopp and James 1896, 93).
Theobald and his evidence are very puzzling. If Theobald existed (and no less
a scholar than Joseph Jacobs has argued that he probably did [12]), one cannot
imagine why he should say such a thing. It has been suggested that he merely
assented to this proposition when Thomas put it to him (Langmuir 1991, 30), but
this does not explain much since we must then ask where else Thomas could have
heard it. The other question is: when did Thomas hear this, either from Theobald or
some other source? Gavin Langmuir thinks that Thomas and Theobald had met
during the writing of Book 1 because Thomas speaks of certain Jews, who were
afterwards converted to the Christian faith and that sounds like Theobald
multiplied from singular to plural for the sake of effect. However, I think it is more
probable that Thomas did not meet Theobald (if he existed), or hear any such
rumour (from another source), until after Book 1 was completed, since surely he
would not have refrained from using this juicy bit of gossip in his account of the
boys death if it had been available? However, it may be that when Book 1 was
being written in 1149/50 some sort of vague rumour about Jewish religious
custom might have come to Thomass ears but it was not specific enough to be
made use of. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that it is possible that such rumours,
or at least dark hints and mutterings, might have been abroad prior to Easter 1144
(Bennett 2003). I do not want to revisit this discussion here, but as an example of
what might be argued look at Sheriff Johns initial response to the Bishop. He says
he will not allow the Jews to answer such inventions of the Christians: surely the
word such implies that this was not an isolated accusation?
However, by the time Thomas was writing Book 2 (1154/55 [13]) one might
suppose that some more solid rumour had emerged, or was emerging, that
Thomas put in the mouth of a fictional Theobald or that a factual Theobald, for
what reasons we cannot guess, confirmed. Be that as it may, the accusation put
Saint William of Norwich 131

into Theobalds mouth was not joined up to the other accusations or rumours.
For example, it does not match up either with Thomass own preferred story or
with the account in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Theobald alleges a ritual but not a
crucifixion; on the other hand, both Book 1 of Thomass Life and the account in
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle allege the boy was crucified, but neither describe it as
a ritual.
Probably more puzzling even than Theobalds supposed evidence is the
question of why on earth did Thomas create this absurd story about a cross that
was not a cross and a crucifixion that was not a crucifixion? He has an explanation.
They did it this way, he says, in case at any time [the body] should be found,
when the fastenings of the nails were discovered it might not be supposed that he
had been killed by Jews rather than Christians (Jessopp and James 1896, 22).
In other words, the Jews deliberately botched it to divert suspicion from
themselves. But why is he driven to such absurdities? Why did not he just go
ahead and depict a recognisable crucifixion, which would need no explanation
and would be so much more convincing, convenient and appropriate to his needs?
I think the solution to this puzzle is that his story in part depends on the testimony
of living witnesses and has to be shaped to conform with the evidence they have
given him. He cannot depart too far from what they have told him, he cannot
invent or lie too blatantly. Instead, he is forced to adjust his story to fit theirs.
Some of his witnesses evidence is dotted throughout Book 1 of the Life. This is
recapitulated in more detail in the latter part of Book 2, and other arguments and
testimony (such as that of Theobald) are added. Thomass story seems to be based
on things he has heard or been told by four or five key witnesses: the monks who
washed the boys body preparatory to its reburial in the monks cemetery about a
month after his death; Williams aunt; lward Ded; a Christian serving-girl who
had worked in the Jews house; and Theobald of Cambridge or somebody
like that.
The evidence on which Thomass description of the boys supposed martyrdom
is based would seem to be that of the people who first discover the body, the
monks, and the servant. The servants story is that she heard a commotion and
was sent for boiling water; then, through a chink in a door that had been left ajar,
she saw a boy tied to a post. Later, Thomas says, she took him to the Jews house
and pointed out some suspicious marks on the timbers (Jessopp and James 1896,
91). I take it that Thomas really did go to this house. He wants this to be the scene
of a crucifixion, so the events have somehow to be fitted to what he found there.
I would hazard a guess that what he found were nail holes on part of the panelled
screen commonly found in the better class of English medieval house between the
hall and the solar. Hence the cross with three uprights and a cross-piece.
I would also hazard a guess that he could only find two nail holes in appropriate
places so had to assume/claim that only two of the boys limbs had been nailed
and the other two had been tied somehow. The rest of his description of the torture
and crucifixion would seem to be concocted primarily from descriptions of the
state of the body when it was first found (the teasel, puncture marks and a shaven
head) and from what the monks found when they came to wash the boys body
(damage to hands, feet and side, thorns in the scalp, something that looked like
scalding). Scholars have suggested that all these, with the exception of the teasel,
could have been caused either by the murder, or by the body being dragged
132 Gillian Bennett

through the undergrowth, or by animal attacks while the body lay in the open,
or by the processes of decompositionbut they are all turned by Thomas into
evidence of torture and a crucifixion. [14]
The Jews are implicated in the murder by Williams aunt, who claims that the
boy was last seen entering the Jews house, and by the deathbed evidence of
lward Ded. This is almost as curious as Theobalds supposed testimony. Thomas
says that two priests who were with lward at his death told him that, almost
with his last words, lward had confessed that he had suppressed vital evidence
under pressure from the Sheriff, to whit that he had encountered a group of local
Jews on Good Friday in the wood where Williams body was found. He had
stopped to question them. One was riding or leading a horse that had a sack slung
against its neck. lward touched this with his right hand and he found it was a
human body. The Jews fled in panic into the thickest part of the wood. lward
was suspicious but did not follow; instead he resumed his walk and his devotional
meditation. Supposedly he had later learnt (from what source Thomas does not
say) that the Jews picking their way through the tangled thickets of the wood,
hung the body by a thin flaxen cord to a tree and left it there. Alarmed, they
appealed to the Sheriff who had been wont to be their refuge and their one and
only protector. For a bribe of one hundred marks, the Sheriff compelled lward
to silence until his death (Jessopp and James 1896, 26 8). Later, however, we are
told that the body was lying in the open under an oak tree (Jessopp and James 1896,
32, 33 and 35). Incidentally, it is strange how many of Thomass witnesses are
prone to have reasons for holding their tongues: lward is threatened by the
fearsome Sheriff to such effect that he keeps silent for three years after the Sheriffs
death before making his confession [15]; the maidservant kept quiet because she
was the only Christian working for Jews and was scared they might kill her too
(Jessopp and James 1896, 89 91), and so on.
It is not only lwards supposed deathbed confession that is a farrago of
nonsense. Thomass story, although vividly written, is neither logical nor
convincing; it strongly suggests a narrative cobbled together from bits and pieces
of rumour and hearsay. There has been a story about a sacrifice (Theobald),
another featuring a very strange crucifixion (the maidservant), and another about
a prophetic dream (Williams aunt), and then lwards cops and robbers tale of
men skulking in dark woods, bodies in sacksor maybe hanging from trees by
flaxen threads or maybe lying in the open under an oak treeand threats from
crooked law-enforcers. I would suggest that Thomas based the account on stories
circulating during a rumour flap that followed the discovery of the boys
bodyrumours that were afterwards collated, expanded, consolidated, and
narrativised. [16]
Indeed, Thomass account does depict something very like a rumour flap as
happening in Norwich over Easter weekend. This part of his narrative is so realistic
that I think we can believe that something of this nature did indeed happen and was
vividly recalled by one of his sources. This is how Thomas reports it:
By one man after another telling others their several versions of the story, the rumour got
spread in all directions, and when it reached the city it struck the heart of all who heard it with
exceeding horror. The city was stirred with a strange excitement, the streets were crowded with
people making disturbance. And so some were standing about as if amazed at the new and
Saint William of Norwich 133

extraordinary affair; many were running hither and thither, but especially the boys and young
men; and, a divine impulse seizing them, they rushed in crowds to see the sight. What they
sought they found; on detecting the marks of torture in the body . . . some suspected that the
Jews were not guiltless of the deed; but some, led on by what was really a divine discernment,
protested that it was so. When these returned, they who had stayed at home got together in
groups, and when they heard how the case stood, they too hurried to the sight . . . And thus all
through the Saturday and all through Easter day all the city everywhere was occupied in going
backwards and forwards time after time, and everybody was in excitement and astonishment at
the extraordinary event (Jessopp and James 1896, 36).
The descriptions of the crowds behaviour, the nature of Thomass witnesses
claims, the nature of the things he says he got to hear about, then and laterall
these can give the reader some indication of what might have been actually
rumoured, and can be separated out from Thomass own inventions and
interpretations. What remains is a picture of allegations about the abduction, ill-
treatment and murder of a boy. Possibly suspicion fell on the Jews, perhaps
because there were apprehensions about the nature of the Jewish Passover or
Jewish attitudes to Easter. Possibly, however, suspicion fell on a member of the
English (Christian) community. Time and again Thomas asserts that it was agreed
by all that no Christian could have done such a dreadful deed, and in his account
of the murder he persistently, and unconvincingly, claims that the Jews did
everything the way they did in order to frame the Christians. To me, this suggests
that the available evidence actually pointed to a Christian. Indeed, Joseph Jacobs
has suggested that the murder was committed by Williams own family (Jacobs
1897). But whatever rumours were afloat in 1144 or soon after, they do not seem to
have included anything like a blood libel [17] or a ritual crucifixion.
By 1155, things seem to have changed a little. As the account in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle shows, it was now a matter of record that the boy had been crucified. Of
course, Thomas had also been able to add Theobalds story of an annual sacrifice
to his picture of Jewish crime. But even so, he does not paint a stereotypical picture
of a ritual murder, and was not able to add any further accusations in the eighteen
years that elapsed before he completed his magnum opus. In fact, it was not until
1255 that anything folklorists would recognise as an accusation of Jewish ritual
murder occurred. In the famous case of Little Saint or Sir Hugh of Lincoln in
that year, it was alleged that the boy was stolen, fattened up, disembowelled and
crucified, in order that the Jews could perform their magic arts and, as an insult
to Jesus, in an annual ceremony that all the Jews of the land attended.
However, crucifixion, which Thomas tried so hard to work into his story, had a
relatively short life as an aspect of accusations against Jews in medieval Europe. It
was almost a quarter of a century until there was another accusation of Jewish
child-murder in England. This was the case of Harold of Gloucester in 1168.
Joseph Jacobs prints a translation of a more or less contemporaneous account of
this affair from the Historia Monasterii S. Petri Gloucestriae. Here it is alleged that on
21 February the Jews of all England gathered together for a circumcision
and used the occasion to abduct a boy and later torture him to death (Jacobs 1893,
45 6), but there is no overt accusation about a crucifixion. We are not sure of the
exact nature of the majority of the accusations brought against Jews in the handful
of other English cases between 1144 and the end of the century. [18] We know
crucifixion was one of the accusations brought at Lincoln in 1255, at Winchester
134 Gillian Bennett

in 1192 and at Northampton in 1297, but in general such accusations were not very
common in the annals of medieval defamatory folklore and seem to be something
of a historical dead-end. [19] Between 1300 and 1500 the motif appears only twice
in twenty cases presented in Stracks standard work. [20]
So, can we agree with Joseph Jacobs and others who have claimed that the
myth of the blood accusationthe alleged murder of Christian children at
Passover for ritual purposesarose in England in connection with the case of
William of Norwich (Jacobs 1893, xiii)? Well, yes and no. There was certainly
enough both said and implied in Thomass narrative to form the basis for such an
accusation; and, of course, his account, being a written document, could be used as
a template in the future. But we see these connections to a large extent with
hindsight. With the exception of the claims put in Theobalds mouth (which seem
to have been added ten years after Thomas first put pen to paper, or quill to
parchment), the most significant, enduring and damaging accusations do not
actually explicitly feature in Thomass narrative. There is nothing we would now
recognise as a blood libel, and a careful reading of the account does not lead one to
think that an accusation of Jewish ritual murder was a feature of rumours current
in Norwich during Easter 1144. [21]

Conclusion
The story of St William of Norwich could be considered the perfect legend
from the technical folkloristic point of view. It presents events with total
confidence, such confidence that its version has been accepted as history. This
largely imaginary history has superseded and obscured what is known of the
real history and made any further researches seem redundant. Moreover,
alongside the legend there is a corresponding meta-legend, folklorists own
folklore about the legend, which has grown up because we have been willing to
accept what those who have gone before have said about itand again, any
further researches seem redundant. Both these aspects of the case of William of
Norwich are interesting. What is particularly fascinating, however, is that the
whole story is built on such a very flimsy foundation. There is so little
independent information about what happened at Norwich at Easter 1144 that
scholars cannot now construct a non-legendary version of events.
Several attempts have been made, with varying success, to do this. Re-
interpretations have been many and diverse depending how much of Thomass
evidence the interpreter has been prepared to believe. In M. R. Jamess chapter on
The Legend in the Introduction to the edited Life, four possibilities are put
forward: that this was a genuine ritual murder by the Jews of Norwich; that
William was killed by a Christian who threw the blame on the Jews; that William
was killed by a person or persons unknown and the rest of the story was invented;
and, controversially, that William might indeed have been killed by Jews, or a Jew,
or in the Jewish Quarter, and the rest of the story then invented. Jamess own
conclusion is that the answer lies somewhere between the latter two hypotheses,
although in the latter case he would assume that it was either an accident or the
work of a lone madman (James 1896, lxxvii iii). In a critical review, Joseph Jacobs
proposed instead that William was crucified by his own relatives (Jacobs 1897).
Williams family was ignorant and fanatical enough, Jacobs argued, to think that
Saint William of Norwich 135

a mock crucifixion (stopping just short of death) would sanctify the boy and call
down blessings on his family. Poor William was so traumatised by this procedure
that he suffered a cataleptic fit that his relatives took for death. He was then
transported to the wood, where his body was lightly covered with earth and
leaves. When his family were called to the scene later to identify him, they buried
him and thus ensured his real death. [22] The family threw the blame on the Jews
because they needed a scapegoat and hated Jews.
Other interpretations have ranged from the cataleptic fit theory, minus the
Christian crucifixion detail (Roth 1935, 15; H.L.S. 1925), to the suggestion that maybe
there had been some dangerous and perhaps fatal horseplay in Norwich during the
celebration of Purim one month earlier, and that dark rumours were abroad about
Jewish practices. As a boy friendly towards Jews, William was taken to the house in
order to be questioned about these rumours. When he got frightened and refused to
answer questions, the Jews turned to torture to extract the information and from there
to crucifixion (Anderson 1964, 1005). Alternatively, V. D. Lipman has suggested this
was a case of abduction and child sexual abuse, probably by a Christian (Lipman
1967, 56): this argument is based on Thomass description of the child being found
dressed in his jacket and shoes (Jessopp and James 1896, 323). [23] Gavin
Langmuir has declined to enter into debates about what really happened, but
makes it quite plain that he is unwilling to believe any of Thomass evidence. It is his
contention that Thomas made all or almost all of the story up himself or relied on
fabulations created after the event by Williams Jew-hating priestly family. For
myself, reading between the lines of the Life has led me to think that it is likely that the
boy was murdered; perhaps he was abused in some way too, but he was not crucified
by Jews or anybody else. I also think it is less likely that the murder took place in the
Jewish quarter than in the English part of town or in the wood where his body was
discovered. Jewish residents of Norwich are, therefore, less likely than Christian ones
to be Williams murderers. But we will never know.
Even at the time, of course, the manner of the boys death was a mystery to most
people. Book 2 of Thomass Life of William opens with criticism of those who:
though they saw with their own eyes that he . . . was cruelly murdered, or heard of it with their
ears, or read of it in this present record, yet say We are indeed certain of his death, but we are
entirely uncertain and doubtful by whom and why and how he was killed.

This is a very reasonable position, of course, and historians and folklorists, like
these cautious commentators, will share a good deal of uncertainty. The legend,
however, speaks with economy and assurance, as legends always do: In [King
Stephens] time, it boldly announces, the Jews of Norwich bought a Christian
child before Easter and . . . on Good Friday hanged him on a cross on account of our
Lord; [t]hat the Jews escaped massacre was mainly due to the cool-headedness of
the sheriff, who permitted them to take refuge in the royal castle.

Notes
[1] William was never canonised, his claim to sainthood being recognised only locally.
[2] The case of William of Norwich has been surveyed by many scholars. In addition to the
references given in the text, passing references to this case occur throughout the literature of
the Blood Libel Legend (for example, Jessopp 1893; Moore 1987, 27 44; also see the essays in
136 Gillian Bennett

Alan Dundes [1991a] casebook, especially those by Colin Holmes [1991], Cecil Roth [1991] and
Dundes himself [Dundes 1991b]). My summary of the consensus view is drawn from these and
other well-known sources.
[3] Thomas of Monmouth alleges that thirty shillings (thirty pieces of silver) were given to the
boys mother. Other references to Judas Iscariot proliferate in this part of the narrative.
[4] The historical information about mid-twelfth-century Norwich for this section relies on Jacobs
(1893), the Introduction to Jessopp and Jamess Life of William (Jessopp and James 1896,
Richardson (1960), Anderson (1964), and Lipman (1967).
[5] This information comes from Lipman and is calculated on tax returns. It is obviously to a
degree speculative since there are very few statistics available for the period. Lipmans figures
are extrapolated from the Doomsday survey of 1086 and a survey of 1377 (see Lipman 1967, 9
12 and 35 8).
[6] Joseph Jacobs explains it like this: State and Church were one, and none could belong to the
state who did not belong to the State Church (1893, xi).
[7] Joseph Jacobs comments: Owing to the close connection of the Church with national life, the
Jew could find no career in agriculture, trade, public or municipal office and was
consequently forced into money lending and capitalist schemes that were regarded as usury.
Usury was banned and the law allowed the King to confiscate the estate of all usurers dying as
such. Hence, as a Jew could only be a usurer, his estate was always potentially the Kings, and
could be dealt with as if it were his own (Jacobs 1893, xii and xv).
[8] However, Lipman and Richardson argue that the Jews were typical of the Norman population
as a whole and represented a cross-section of the community: a few rich capitalists, with a
more numerous middle class, and a much larger class of the poor (Lipman 1967, 39). The one
very rich Jewish family in Norwich did not gain their wealth and prominence until after the
affair of St William (Richardson 1960, 25 8). I am not sure the question of their wealth matters
very much, since exemption from taxes and tolls would be enough to create economic
privilege.
[9] Langmuir suggests 1146 (Langmuir 1991, 12), Lipman suggests 1148 (Lipman 1967, 13) and
James suggests 1148 50 (James 1896, lxxiv).
[10] This is neatly expressed in Umberto Ecos great (and greatly folkloric) book Baudolino:
Baudolino knew that a good relic could change the fate of a city, cause it to become
the destination of uninterrupted pilgrimage, transform a simple church into a shrine
(Eco 2003, 111).
[11] Some of these anomalies are pointed out in Cecil Roths essay The Feast of Purim and the
Origins of the Blood Accusation (see Roth 1991, 266 7). He notes, for example, the lack of a
connection with Passover and the lack of the use of blood for any specific purpose.
[12] See Jacobs (1897, 752).
[13] Book 2 must certainly have been written after 1154 since it alludes to the reign of King Stephen
as in the past (Stephen died in 1154). For the dating of the Life, see Langmuir (1991, 26 8).
[14] In a personal communication (September 2004) Bill Ellis has pointed out how similar these
processes are to those in the cattle mutilation scares he followed in the 1970s. He writes: one
issue that seems especially contemporary is Thomas of Monmouths dogged efforts to
reconstruct the ritual murder from the ambiguous physical evidence. This reminds me of
equally contorted (and equally absurd) efforts to reconstruct the alleged occult rituals behind
cattle mutilations . . . here too minute details of the condition of the animals corpses when
found in the open (after predators and natural processes of decomposition had begun) was
often used to infer bizarre cult activities in much the same way as Thomas seems to have tried
to reconstruct a ritual crucifixion from a stubbornly uncooperative set of clues. See also Ellis
(1991; 2003, 221 5).
Saint William of Norwich 137

[15] John de Chesney died in 1146.

[16] For a lucid description of a rumour flap, see Goss (1987); for useful discussions of
contemporary parallels involving satanic panics, see Bromley (1991), Ellis (2003), Victor
(1989; 1993), and the essays in Richardson et al. (1991).
[17] In fact, for a recognisable blood libel we have to wait almost a century until 1235, when at Fulda
in present-day Germany it was alleged that two local Jews had killed five children and
collected their blood in bags smeared with wax.
[18] Jacobs says that the case of Harold of Gloucester is the only full contemporary account of any of
the English boy martyrs (1893, 47).
[19] The crucifixion motif became part of the iconography of the blood libel, in the sense that the
boy was often portrayed as being tied to a cross while being drained of his blood (see Maccoby
1982, 153 and Trachtenburg 1943, 136), but there are only a handful of texts where crucifixion
for religious reasons was the primary or only accusation.
[20] These were the cases at Prague in 1305 and La Guardia in 1488. In some cases there are
references to wounds to forehead, hands and feet, as at Valreas in France in 1247, and to
fearful tortures in five others of Stracks case histories, but it is not clear whether these
indicate crucifixion or multiple lacerations for purposes of obtaining blood.
[21] In passing it should be noted that the two most famous literary redactions of the Blood Libel
Legend in the English languagethe traditional ballad Sir Hugh or The Jews Daughter,
and Chaucers Prioress Taledo not actually feature a blood accusation. The former alleges
a murder and exsanguination but for no ritual purpose; in the latter, the child is murdered for
singing Christian hymns as he passes through the Jewish quarter.
[22] Interestingly, Thomas reports that Godwin thought that the child might still be alive. When the
earth over the body moved for a second time, the priest bade them make haste, for he believed
that he would find him still alive (Jessopp and James 1896, 39). Thomas prefers to think that
the discernible movement in the earth that covered William was Gods sign that the body of a
saint lay there.
[23] It is possible of course that the child was indeed subjected to some sort of abuse, sexual or
otherwise, but I am not convinced that Thomas meant to imply that the child was dressed only
in jacket and shoes: he might have meant that he was dressed in his outdoor clothes.

Acknowledgements
Every effort has been made to contact owners of copyright material. Where this has
not been possible, omissions will be rectified in any future reprint of this article.

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Biographical Note
Gillian Bennett was a member of the FLS committee for twenty years. She edited Folklore from 1993 to 2003
and before that was editor of FLS Books. Her principle research interests are supernatural beliefs and
contemporary legends. Her publications include Contemporary Legend: A Folklore Bibliography (1993)
and Contemporary Legend: A Reader (1996), which were both co-authored with Paul Smith. Alas Poor
Ghost!: Traditions of Belief in Story and Discourse followed in 1999, and her most recent book, Bodies:
Sex, Violence, Disease, and Death in Contemporary Legends, is due to be published by University Press
of Mississippi in October 2005.