Jews and Saracens in Chaucer’s England: A Review of the Evidence Henry Ansgar Kelly University of California, Los Angeles Much attention has been given to Chaucer’s treatment of Jews in The Prioress’s Tale and to Chaucer’s own attitudes toward Jews and the attitudes of others of his time and place.1 But it would profit us, in my view, to expand our focus beyond Jews to other nonChristians ,2 and beyond literary influences to the actual presence of ‘‘inI observe the following procedures in my citations: I use modern punctuation and capitalization; regularize u/v, i/j, and i/y; and I convert edh, thorn, and yogh into modern values. I treat medieval Latin like the vernacular of the author of each passage (which is the way the author spelled and pronounced it); and in citing classicized editions, I convert ae and oe to their medieval form (namely, e). This is in keeping with my manifesto , ‘‘Uniformity and Sense in Editing and Citing Medieval Texts,’’ published in the Medieval Academy News, Spring 2004, and my supplementary letter in the Spring 2005 issue. 1 For a review of bibliography, including older works, see Larry D. Benson’s edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), p. 438. Among recent noteworthy studies are: Lawrence Besserman, ‘‘Chaucer, Spain, and the Prioress’s Antisemitism ,’’ Viator 35 (2004): 329–53; Jeffrey J. Cohen, ‘‘The Flow of Blood in Medieval Norwich,’’ Speculum 79 (2004): 26–65; Roger Dahood, ‘‘The Punishment of the Jews, Hugh of Lincoln, and the Question of Satire in Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale,’’ Viator 36 (2005); the various articles in Sheila Delany, ed., Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, Contexts, Meanings (New York: Routledge, 2002); Denise Despres, ‘‘Cultic Anti-Judaism and Chaucer’s Litel Clergeon,’’ MP 91 (1993–94): 413–27 (Despres’s ‘‘The Protean Jew in the Vernon Manuscript’’ is in Delany, pp. 145–64); Elisa Narin van Court, ‘‘Socially Marginal, Culturally Central: Representing Jews in Late Medieval English Literature,’’ Exemplaria 2 (2000): 293–326; Lee Patterson, ‘‘‘The Living Witnesses of Our Redemption ’: Martyrdom and Imitation in Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale,’’ JMEMSt 31 (2001): 507–60; Sylvia Tomasch, ‘‘Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew,’’ The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey J. Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), pp. 243–60 (repr. in Delany, pp. 69–85). 2 Brenda Deen Schildgen, Pagans, Tartars, Moslems, and Jews in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), has made a good start in this direction; and see Gila Aloni and Shirley Sharon-Zisser, ‘‘Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Lyne Oriental ’: Mediterranean and Oriental Languages in the Treatise on the Astrolabe,’’ Mediterranean Historical Review 16:2 (December 2001): 69–77; and Sheila Delany, ‘‘Chaucer’s Prioress, the Jews, and the Muslims,’’ in Delany, Chaucer and the Jews, pp. 43–57. PAGE 129 129 ................. 11491$ $CH5 11-01-10 14:01:22 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER fidels’’ or ex-infidels in England. Most of us, I think, have assumed that there were laws against allowing non-Christians, especially Jews, into England, and that such laws were successfully enforced. We sometimes see it argued that the absence of Jews from England made an important difference to Chaucer’s understanding of the tale told by the Prioress. Not many Chaucerians, it seems, are aware of the presence of the Domus Conversorum in London or of its history, even though the basic facts have long been available. However, some of the alleged facts need to be corrected, and new data concerning not only Jews but also Muslims and northern pagans need to be added. Hence my present review of documentary evidence for the presence of non-Christians and ex-nonChristians (converts) in England. At the end of it, I hope that we will be in a better position to assess all proximate and remote influences upon beliefs and prejudices in Chaucer’s day. The House of (Jewish) Converts I will begin with the Jews and will focus on the Domus Conversorum, or House of Converts, in London. The only thorough account of it is that of Michael Adler in 1939,3 and before him the most informative discussion of...