Jewish Massacre at Clifford’s Tower

Episode 12 The Fourth Lateran Council and the Jews

1215: Years That Changed History

Dr Dorsey Armstrong (2019)

Film Review

In this lecture, Armstrong traces that persecution of marginalized populations (which was new to European society) that became official with the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. For the most part it included, lepers,* Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and women.

She believes this persecutory culture (persisting to the present day) resulted from a relative shortage of land caused by the Medieval Warm Period (950-1250 AD) and the subsequent population boom. Systematic persecution gave ruling elites a justification to confiscate the lands of designated minorities. In the case of Jews, laws restricting them from occupations other than money lending, banking and rent collection made them particularly loathsome to people who owed them money. Following their expulsion from successive European countries, people who owed them money had their debts forgiven.

Historically the Romans had acknowledged Jews as good public servants and scholars, especially as they didn’t proselytize the way Christians did. As king of the Franks, Lombard and the Holy Roman Empire (768-814), Charlemagne welcomed them as merchants, traders and scholars. In England, Henry II ( 1154-89) dismissed all his Norman banking and financial advisors and replaced them with Jewish officials.

Although a minority, Jews experienced a golden age of Jewish culture in Muslim Spain. This ended in 1279, when Alfonso VIII who ruled the small Christian kingdom of Castile, ordered all the Jewish tax-farmers imprisoned. In January 1281, he ordered the rest of the Jewish population arrested while they were attending synagogue, demanding a ransom of 4,380,000 gold maravedis for their release. By the end of the 13th century, Spanish Jews were segregated into walled ghettos and only  allowed to work as money lenders and rent collectors. In 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella “liberated” the Iberian peninsula from from Muslim rule, they expelled all Jews from Spain.

Edward I, the great grandson of Henri II, expelled all Jews from England in 1290. They were only allowed to return when England briefly became a republic in 1656,

Philippe Auguste (1165-1223) of France expelled all French Jews in 1182, except for those who managed his treasury

During several crusades, marauding crusaders staged wholesale massacres on Jewish communities in German speaking countries.

There were also Jewish massacres in York** and Bury St Edwards in 1190. In York, after setting fire to a tower where Jewish families had taken refuge, the rioters immediately went to the cathedral (where the city kept their loan documents) and burned them as well.

*As farmland became more scarce, there was increasing migration towards cities where people lived closer together and the prevalence of leprosy increased. By the 13th century, lepers were no longer allowed to inherit or bequeath land.

**The York city fathers had invited a group of Jewish money lenders to take up residence to help finance the city’s growing trade network.

Film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/12392969/12392994