ABSTRACT
Despite religious differences and the well-documented violent attacks by Christians on their Jewish neighbors, Jews and Christians interacted more cooperatively both within and outside the law in the cities and towns of medieval England. Christians and Jews were neighbors passing each other regularly in city streets, in village lanes, and on country roads. Jews and Christians bargained in the market places where they sold and purchased goods from each other. Christians worked in Jewish homes as servants and consulted Jewish doctors. Jewish women were wet nurses for Christian children. Christians were in and out of Jewish homes in the process of negotiating and repaying loans, and Jewish lender and Christian borrower together went to the archa, an official chest in which a counterpart of all contracts involving Jews was to be deposited, to register the loan documentation. When disagreements arose over the terms of loans, lenders and borrowers met in court, often meeting outside of court to settle their differences.1 There was, however, a less documented form of Jewish-Christian interaction: Christians and Jews conspired together outside the law and they were tried and punished together in England’s courts and jails.
