Violence, Letters, and the Law: Jewish-Christian Interaction and Episcopal Sanction in Thirteenth-Century England

Abstract

ABSTRACT In June 1278, Richard Gravesend, bishop of Lincoln, sent a letter to King Edward I, begging his aid in punishing fourteen Christians excommunicated for working as servants and nursemaids in Jewish households. Eight years later, Richard Swinfield, bishop of Hereford, wrote to the chancellor of Hereford commanding that he publicly condemn Christian participants in a local Jewish wedding celebration. These letters attest to the hostile legal and political climate for English Jews in the thirteenth century. But they also hint at communal interactions between Jews and Christians that proved more intimate and amicable than statutory records tend to indicate. In this essay, the authors-a historian and literary scholar, respectively-bring their distinct disciplinary perspectives to bear on these letters and their implications for thirteenth-century English communities. Tolan analyses them within the larger context of anti-Jewish legislation in England, while Jahner looks to contemporary literary and cultural productions sponsored by Gravesend and Swinfield and their households. Together, the authors consider the legacy of anti-Jewish violence in England by focusing on the kind of domestic affiliations and arrangements that often escape historiographic notice, even as they prove foundational to the regulation of communal affairs.