ABSTRACT

The influential Dominican theologian Robert Holcot 1 (d.1349) lived and died in an England entirely bereft of Jews. It is of course possible that Holcot encountered an occasional Jewish merchant on one of the major English trade routes, but it appears highly unlikely that Holcot would ever have encountered a family, much less a substantial community, of Jews at any point in his lifetime. Yet, just as is the case for Geoffrey Chaucer, despite the absence of Jews from England during Holcot's lifetime, issues concerning Jews and Judaism are by no means absent from Holcot's works.